


Drabbles and Ficlets

by ibuzoo



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/F, F/M, Ficlet, Ficlet Collection, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-08-14 06:44:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 105
Words: 35,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16487729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ibuzoo/pseuds/ibuzoo
Summary: This is a collection of drabbles and ficlets about different pairings and characters, originally written on tumblr. Most of them are short, with a couple of longer ones.





	1. Tom x Hermione - #1

"I'd die for you."

Hermione watches him and counts the stars reflecting in the black of his eyes. He looks hungry. He looks alive.

"I don't want you to die," she says and kisses the sharp outline of his cheekbone, "I want you to stay alive. I want you to bleed."

Tom falls asleep with the hum of her voice beside him.


	2. Ginny x Tom - #1

_It's not your fault._

Ginny watches the scraped up outline of a body on the other side of the mirror and she feels like a glass menagerie right before point break. Slowly, she traces the soft swelling of her belly on the cold surface and can feel the tears gathering behind her eyes. Her mind is blissfully silent. No silken voice that speaks to her.

She's not possessed anymore.

_It's not your fault. It's not your fault._

But she wishes she were.


	3. Draco x Hermione - #1

"So what's the big plan now?" Draco comes up to her side, a streak of dirt half over his forehead that colours the usual bright of his hair in a dirty brown. His eyes are incredibly raw but calmer as the sea. It anchors her. She can see the blurred outlines of the others in the background, huddled together and keeping each other warm in the wasteland Voldemort left behind after the fight.

"We fight," Hermione says, knuckles white over the smooth wood of her wand. "We will storm the Gods."


	4. Tom x Hermione - #2

"Falling in love is a dangerous thing."

Tom watches her intently. Hermione looks up from the armchair, hair in a messy bun and a pencil sticking out between the wild brown. Her smile is razor-sharp. He wants to kiss it off.

"And why is that?" She closes the book slowly and puts it away.

He catches her wrist and pulls her close enough to feel her heart beating steadily against his skin. Slowly he leans down and kisses her temple. "Because I never realized one could fall in love with humans the same way one could fall in love with blood."


	5. Theodore x Hermione - #1

Theodore realizes there's a difference between kissing someone when drunk and kissing them when sober. Everything feels sharper, less whimsical with all his senses in place. It's less failing memories and more keen movements - brown wild hair beneath his fingers, teeth and nails that drag over his skin, kisses that draw blood with precision. He watches, eyes blown wide, the shaping bruises around Hermione's throat.

 _Granger_ , he reminds himself harsh,  _not Hermione. Granger._

There's a wildfire in Granger's eyes. Theodore likes how it burns.


	6. Lily x Narcissa - #1

A mass of unread messages waits for her the next day. Lily doesn't need to read the name to know it's Narcissa.

In the end, when it comes down to it, she understands.

Lily is Narcissa's lifeline.  
Narcissa is Lily's sanity.

It's kind of saintly, isn't it?


	7. Ignotus Peverell

"Life gives you nothing," Death murmurs against Ignotus' back.

The faint trace of dry lips tickles against Ignotus' shoulder-blades. Sparks and smoke rise every time Death touches him. The smell of burned flesh clings to the inside of his nose. A thick blanket of ash lies on his tongue.

Death bends forwards until he lies flat on Ignotus; the cold scratch of a bone rasps on his neck.  
"Even Death needs to be earned."

Ignotus nods, shivering.


	8. Bellatrix Black

Brainwashing is, under present circumstances, rather simple.

Isolate the victim. Expose them to inconsistent messages. Mix with sleep deprivation. Add some form of abuse. Get the person to doubt what they know and feel. Keep them on their toes.

Bellatrix has heard it a dozen times in military school.

But instead of pain or metallic torture instruments, Harry Potter enters the room with a plate full of mashed potatoes and red cabbage that smells like her mother's favourite dish and the vegetables her grandfather used to grow in his garden. She looks at the food with wary eyes.

"You need to eat," Harry says, long body drawn to full height when he loosens the handcuff on her left wrist so she can grab the spoon he had brought with him. He sits down across from her. He doesn't say another word. She wishes he would.


	9. Tom x Hermione - #3

As soon as the sun dies below the horizon into its grave, the night calls. The shadows grow, the darkness sings and most importantly the clock on the time-turner stops.

Tom watches the clock and snarls with anger.

Time stops but the sun doesn't.  
It comes up with morning and Hermione is still gone.


	10. Draco x Harry - #1

"If you were a woman," Pansy says one night when they're still in the library with two butterbeer and a pile of essays to correct, "Potter would accept what's going on between the two of you."

If you were a woman he'd want to fuck you on his teacher desk, she means.

"If I were a woman," Draco says bitterly, "I'm sure I'd have better taste."

Pansy looks at him with a mixture of pity and amusement and that makes him feel even worse.


	11. Rabastan & Rodolphus Lestrange

Rodolphus looks at him - Molotov cocktail in one hand and a burning car behind him. Long fingers occupy the place of Rabastan's nape; Rodolphus pushes his thumb into the aching muscles to make Rabastan look up. Rabastan follows immediately.

"Can't you see? No police, no fucking rules. Just us."

"It's not enough."

Rodolphus' face splits. When he snarls he reminds Rabastan of more animal than human. Something terribly broken flickers in his twin's eyes.

"Fuck off." Rodolphus throws the cocktail into the burning car. The flames roar. "I would declare war for you, Bast."

 _I know,_  Rabastan thinks. _I know._


	12. Tom x Hermione - #4

He had loved her once. Like a shadow. Like the split second of sparkling stars when you rub your eyes. Like the feeling when you drown.

Tom sneers disparagingly. His lip curls over his teeth in disgust.

In darkness, hidden, his heart morses her name.

_Too much. Too much._

He turns around and leaves.


	13. Regulus x James

Eventually, they drift apart.

Regulus prefers his habits with other priorities soon after James stops visiting him.

Remus tells James that it was inevitable. "You are predestined to love what will destroy you," he says.

 _No, I won't let him_ , James thinks. _I can't._

Sirius tells James later about illegal races, about nightmares and bloody fingerprints on the bathroom floor. Sirius tells him about the bottles of alcohol that pile up in the kitchen sink and about a boy with a strange tattoo on his arm.

Somewhere along the line, James forces himself to stop to listen. And a while later Sirius stops to tell.

He forgets about Regulus.  
Regulus forgets about him

It's better that way.


	14. Ginny x Tom - #2

The next time they meet, Tom blows a building up.  
Not just any building. The Burrow.

They stand outside on the green fields, two looming figures between lush colours that are tainted with grey and charcoal ashes. Thin flakes of ash in their collars, in the creases of their palms, in Tom's black hair - Ginny brushes it off but stops mid-movement, as if she's not quite sure that this is right. If this is right.

She licks her lips and tastes the thin sheet of sweat and adrenaline on it; the quick rush of air into her lungs. For a second, in the roaring red flames against the dark, she's completely awake.

Something flickers over Tom's lips. A reminder of a grin that looks like a half-lit fuse and a gallon of petrol. Something crumbles ahead of them, a wall or a ceiling devoured by the flames.

"Stop staring, Ginevra," Tom says and then he leans in and kisses a hot, wet stripe up her neck.

Slowly, she falls in love.


	15. Draco x Hermione - #2

Theo makes him go to the meeting.

There's a large poster that praises the support group for people who lost their soulmates; it's green and orange with bright red letters and a thick blue drop that symbolizes a tear. Draco feels sick watching it.

"You don't have to say anything," Theo says when he pushes the double glass doors open. Draco watches him drag a row of white teeth over his under lip, then suck it in before he continues. "Sometimes it helps to listen what other people have been through, you know?"

 _No, it doesn't_ , Draco thinks bitter. The thought poisons his mind and leaves a sour taste in his mouth.  _This is my pain, no one else's._

But Theo is already slumping down on one of the nearby chairs and Draco follows, arms crossed while he chews on a spearmint chewing-gum. And he listens.

He listens and he resents Theo for it because  _no_ , he doesn't want to know about the girl who lost her soulmate to a pointless war.  _No,_  he doesn't want to know about the old lady whose man died of heart failure after 37 years of marriage. And he definitely doesn't want to know about the man whose wife died in a fire on Christmas Eve.

Hermione didn't simply  _die_  and vanish from his life.  
Death would have been far more bearable.

But no.

No.

She had  _left_  him.

He had been on pure petrol and she had lit the match.

The scar on his wrist, where her letter once was, was bold on his skin. Sometimes it itches and he scratches hard enough to draw blood.

He will never allow another name on his wrist again.


	16. Harry x Tom

Four brightly polished cars pull up at the school, disregarding any traffic signs or white lines of the parking lots.

Something in the air dries rusty.

Harry should look away. He should turn the fuck around and just ignore them. But he can't. He knows them all. Even behind their alluring dark-tainted windows, he can pick them apart one by one: Black, the Lestrange twins, Dolohov. A pack of hungry jackals on leashes. But his eyes are not meant for them. They're transfixed on the black hood of the Jaguar that leads them on. The leash-keeper. The Alpha. Tom.

Even at the distance between them, Harry can see his sharp profile against the reflecting light of the sun. Tom hasn't changed. Same dark eyebrows, same full lips and a perfect row of white, peeked teeth - like a shark bit, razor-sharp and deadly. Dark sunglasses on his nose, tie casually thrown around his neck, Tom strides over the green past a couple of seniors who all look at him like their biggest nightmare come to flesh. He doesn't look up.

Something inside of Harry contracts furiously. His jaw works.

People come and go.

But while most are mere cigarette breaks, Tom is a forest fire who uses people as razor blades.

Harry needs to make sure he doesn't get burned this time.


	17. Sirius x Hermione

"You love her," James says one evening, six months after Hermione fell through time and space and right into Sirius' lap, and throws a crumb of bread at Sirius' head that bumps off and lies still in the empty place between them. "In a twisted, fucked-up way of course but it's you. No one would expect anything else from you."

Sirius tenses. Every muscle in his body, every bone is painfully aware of the fine, crackling fibre of anger that rushes through his body. He doesn't love her. He can't love her. All the venom and flung out discussions over the last month prove that part. This, whatever it is between him and Hermione is no love. It's hate. It must be.

James watches him for a long time and considers his answer. The air around them freezes.

"If you hate someone, you still love them underneath. You love them enough to care. The opposite of love is not hate, Sirius," James continues nonchalantly with a smile that hurts to look at because it echoes the pain inside of Sirius well enough.

Sirius swallows hard around the lump in his throat. He needs to get away, he needs to get away, he needs to -

"The opposite of love is indifference. Hermione has never been indifferent to you."

Sirius' heart splits.


	18. Narcissa x Tom

Perhaps the saddest part was not that they were hungry to see the world burn.  
Perhaps the saddest part about their story was, that they were terribly and utterly human.

Narcissa walks out one late morning, head spinning from the taste of old rancid alcohol on her tongue, eyes heavy-lid and itching from too little sleep.

She doesn't return. Tom doesn't search for her either.

Sometimes Narcissa remembers a time when she loved a boy that meant trouble and how they both burned like the ashes of her cigarette until nothing remained than the pure grey smoke of yesterday.

Eventually, she dreams of a world, swallowed up in flames.  
Narcissa turns around and forces herself to sleep.


	19. Albus D. x Gellert G.

"I am going to love you to pieces," Gellert says, with a look in his eyes that promises all the pain and suffering in the world.

Albus nods, obedient, and leans his head far enough for Gellert to bite his way down his chest. The pain follows immediately.

He's in love. He's insane. What's the difference anyway?


	20. Ginny x Luna

"People," Luna says one afternoon when they're in the gym hall, "always fight you."

"People  _destroy_  you," Ginny reminds her harsh. "You let them in and watch them conquer. They're going to bring the dark out of you and you'll gladly hand them the bullets to finish you off."

"Then we should carry people around us that are good for our souls. Like Band-aids."

"Band-aids can't fix bullet holes, Luna," Ginny says smiling and fastens the black cotton bandage over her knuckles. She flexes her hands and starts to punch the bag.

Behind her, Luna starts to hum lowly.


	21. Ginny x Luna  - #2

There was a time when Ginny didn't remember the taste of ashes and snow on her tongue. Maybe in her last life. Or the one before.

Luna had an insatiable curiosity and constantly hunted Ginny for the past five reincarnations. And every time, Ginny bit her tongue and held her breath because disclosing any information about their previous cycles was forbidden. It was a small tightrope act they were balancing against fate.

"Ginny," Luna whispered, eyes downcast and demure with eyes as big and round as the moon, holding all the world's pain in the small of her smile. "You and I both know that this will be the last time. We don't have much time left. Will you be there…in the end? I saw Neville, but not you."

Ginny swallowed hard and turned away. She didn't like talking about the end. She couldn't face her like this: all her fear and madness engraved harshly on her body. Voldemort would come. Voldemort was near.

Luna said, "Will you be there in the end?"

But Luna meant, _Will you be there if I die?_

"I will try," Ginny said, at last, and kissed the cold skin of Luna's fingers with shaken lips.


	22. Fleur x Bill

Fleur wasn't there when Bill was injured, but she can imagine it well enough; claws, blood, scars, pain, agony. Between the official report from the Aurors and her own knowledge of the situation and the people involved, she can paint a pretty clear mental picture.

She didn't get a good look at Greyback fleeing the scene, but she saw enough of the monster in the deep red slashes all over Bill's face. When she closes her eyes, she can see what it must've been like when Greyback's claws closed around Bill's throat. When he lifted him from the ground to slam him into the stone wall. When his muzzle had mauled his skin to shreds.

Again.

And again.

She can imagine Bill's eyes rolling back, teeth clenching desperately together. She can see his expression going dazed, his hands dropping their grip on Greyback's arm as his body went limp. She can even hear the sound his broken body might've made when the monster dropped him carelessly to the floor.

She didn't see Shacklebolt holding his wand on Bill afterwards when Greyback was long gone, or Charlie shooting him down with an Immobulus spell to make him stop convulsing and shivering and writhing and-  
No.

She doesn't have to imagine her mother-in-law holding him, cradling his head in her lap and screaming for help, blood spilling between her fingers, tinting the blue of her clothes dark red. She saw that with her own two eyes.

She will never forget.


	23. Draco x Charlie

Draco has all but forgotten the mention of soulmates by the time it comes up again, half a year and most of a country later.

"Your soulmate," Harry says, one afternoon while the two of them set up camp just outside of a little French town, because of cause Harry fucking Potter thinks soulmates are the right topic for small talk. "Did it work out?"

Draco does not even want to know why and Potter knows that he met his soulmate.

Sure, the mark is not a secret. It's a small red slash right over his hipbone that could easily be mistaken for a scar. And yes, it is coloured so obviously he already met his soulmate. But he's quite sure he never showed the mark to Potter and they don't talk about personal matters. Out of principles. Work was work and everything outside was not allowed. Draco had principles.

So when he closes his eyes to take a deep breath he sees deep blue eyes and a smile sharp enough to cut and red hair burning auburn in the dying sun and -

"No," Draco answers to distract himself, eyes open, swaying his wand to tug at a rope with a practised motion. One of the tents rises smoothly into the air.

"I'm sorry," Harry says after a while with something aching to remorse in his voice. It's so far from the response Draco was expecting - the response he usually receives - that he looks up.

"Excuse me?"

"I just think you deserve to be happy," Potter says.

 _You don't deserve to be alone_ , Draco hears instead. The lump in his throat grows heavier.

It's tragic enough.


	24. Bellatrix x Rodolphus

Bellatrix remembers this:

Her mama telling her that she must be an adult now. A lady in the body of a child. Strong. _A Black._

* * *

Bellatrix remembers this:

A dark room, barely lit in green. Frozen hands pressed against her cheeks, stretching her skin until her teeth hurt. A cold, sharp voice; angry.

"When he comes, you must kill him."

"I love him," Bellatrix answers. The words stuck to her throat. Rodolphus brought her from the cold palace of her parents, and he made her better; he calls her beauty and little bird and brings her expensive gifts like perfume and macaroons that she loves.

The bony hands tighten around her face and they press into the hollows of her cheeks until it hurts; her mouth tastes coppery like pennies. Like blood. She struggles, and the hands grip tighter until she gives in.

"Love is for the unworthy," the voice says. "You worship me, I am your god. Now, pay your homage."

There is no argument left in her.

* * *

Bellatrix remembers this:

That night when Rodolphus came into her room she stabbed him three times in the chest, blade angled upward so it would slide past his ribs. Once for the liver, once for the lungs, once for the heart.

"Little bird," he said with a quiet last breath.

* * *

Bellatrix remembers this:

He had a bloody handprint on his cheek and teardrop marks on his shirt. And he smiled as he died.


	25. Credence x Percival

The second time Credence lets Graves fuck him is because Graves wants to. He really obviously does, if the marks on his neck and his bloody lips are any indications. And Credence just can't find the energy to put him off - and really why should he when the stubble leaves red burns on his skin and fingerprints that tell a story of some kind - any kind - of love. Love is all Credence is after.

When he comes it's the kind of orgasm that makes his brain crack and splinter into a thousand pieces, the one when you're not able to feel anything except the slight drum of your veins when your mind hums before coming to a rest. Just softness, the pillow on his cheek, eyes heavy, eyes closing.

He doesn't feel Graves get up and leave, and he definitely doesn't feel soft lips between his shoulder blades that murmur his name. He's grateful for it.

The next day an unknown number flashes on his phone.

He ignores it.


	26. Seamus x Dean

"I want you," one of them says but Seamus is not sure who it was and then Dean is tugging him into his lap and Seamus grinds against a perfectly shaped body and yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he can work with this. They're grinding and kissing and tugging and suddenly their trousers are down and Seamus is on his knees with Dean's cock inside his mouth - and he sucks. **  
**

He feels nails dig on his skull, a grunt or a moan or something in between, his name pressed between thin lips. Nothing distracts him, though; all his concentration is on hard warm pulsing flesh in his mouth with chapped lips and a demanding tongue and -

Dean comes.

Seamus would count it as a victory, except that he's coughing because Dean just came in his mouth and the bastard is smiling at him, not laughing, just smiling. Seamus fishes a gum out of his pocket, jams it between his teeth and that's all he can do before Dean fully attacks his mouth again, all wet and warm with the half-bitten gum.

Until Dean retreats, disgusted. "What the hell is that taste?"

Seamus grins, chews, and says, "It's Pineapple and Lemon, you tosser. Piss off."


	27. Hermione x Fleur

"There's a bet going around," Ron tells her and leans against her desk, "about whether or not you and Fleur are a thing now." **  
**

"So we're children then?" Hermione asks. "Is there anything else?"

There's a moment of silence. Then Ron wets his lips and says cautiously, "Listen, about Fleur-"

Hermione cuts him off mid-sentence and gestures to the folders right in front of her. "I have work to do. Could this possibly wait for a better time?"

 _Perhaps never_ , she added in her mind and for once in his life, Ron seems to get it. He nods, keeps his mouth shut and leaves her alone.

Across the room, Fleur presents her with a smile that says she heard every word. It would make good fodder for conversation tonight.


	28. Regulus x Hermione

"When do you know it's over?", Regulus asks quietly. It startles him how cold his own voice sounds; far too sober, without the usual bite or arrogance. It disgusts him.

He watches the twisted branches of bleak trees, all the leaves gone in preparing for winter that approaches with fast steps.

Hermione brushes her fingers over the expensive cotton of his Burberry Trenchcoat and when she replies her voice is calm with soft edges, that cut through the leather.

"When someone stops trying because it no longer works."


	29. Albus x Scorpius

Things were different before. Albus could feel it, though he isn't ready to accept. Not yet.

He sits on his bed cross-legged, cigarette dangling from his fingers while his eyes follow Scorpius as he moves around his room. His room looks like a mess, clothes and blueprints, sketches and art supplies, wires, tubes, all spread along the ugly carpeted floor.

"This has good balance," Scorpius says, raising a prototype gun with microsensors coded to Albus' own fingerprints - voice-operated self-destruction mechanism, muriatic acid included _._  Scorpius stares along the barrel as if he's searching for a flaw.

"You could get a hobby, you know," Albus suggests half-jokingly. Scorpius puts the gun down, takes a moment to uncurl his long fingers and Albus watches, thinks, _Jesus Christ._

"Is this your hobby?" Scorpius asks, gesturing to the half-built weaponry and other prototypes that surround them.

Albus shrugs. "Sometimes I take down popular websites, you know. Youtube, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter. For fun."

At that Scorpius' mouth twitches, like he doesn't know whether to laugh or be scandalized. "Cyberterrorism as entertainment?"

Albus huffs, takes another pull on his cigarette, blows out the fine white smoke. "I don't suppose you have a lot of very long and boring Sunday afternoons, do you?"


	30. Hermione x Blaise

Hermione thinks she falls in love on a Friday.

"This is bad." She rubs a white cotton ball over Blaise's wound; a clean, red cut on his shoulder, right above the muscle where a stray spell hit him this afternoon during duel club. The wound is neither infected nor dirty. A beautiful red slash on dark skin. Almost poetically.

"You said that already," Blaise groans and presses his lips into a thin line as soon as Hermione starts to rub the iodine over the wound.

They keep silent for a while and Hermione forces her eyes on the cut without straying too far. It was a miracle how someone like Blaise, who could probably change the world with his bare hands tied behind his back and charm werewolves even before breakfast, could be so reckless sometimes.

What a treacherous thing it is to feel. To want. To  _be_  wanted. She puts a patch over the red skin.

"It seemed worth repeating."


	31. Ginny x Tom - #3

There's blood on her forehead that drips down. Slowly. Warm. Over her eyes and cheeks and lips and she thinks it's probably hers. Could always be Tom's - if she's lucky. Ginny rubs at her face, fingertips coming back red. Like bad omens. Then she puts them in the sink of some cheap motel and washes it all away. She needs to hide for some days but that's fine. After all Tom thaught her how to bleed in secret.


	32. Narcissa Black

"Did you hear about Myrtle?" It's Rita who talks - it's always Rita - and Narcissa watches disgusted how the ketchup lingers in her right mouth corner and drops down to the table. She pushes a handful of chips between her teeth before she takes another generous bite from her burger. The cheese and the dark Mexican sauce smear on her cheek and lips in the process.

Lucius sits on Narcissa's side, stretching his long legs under the chair as if they did something to offend him. He jerks his head up irritated, "Myrtle? What about her?"

Rita starts to talk again and little crumbs of bread and beef fall down next to the ketchup in front of her. "She's dead - found her in one of the portable toilets close to the city mall this morning. Poor thing was killed by a single slash last night. She's the third girl within three months."

Narcissa picks at a leaf of lettuce with her white plastic fork and dabs it in her Caesar dressing. She watches how the oil and the herbs coil around the green leaf before she replies a tad too cool, "She won't be the last."

She ignores the glances both cast in her direction and eats.


	33. Credence x Percival - #2

Credence has no excuse.

He's not drunk, nor stoned. It's a Friday night and he's clean and honestly, isn't that the most absurd part of this story? He just wants Graves to fuck him and doesn't feel like saying no to himself anymore.

So he takes Graves to one of the bedrooms and -  _god -_  he wonders if Graves knows what it feels like when he pushes and presses, and gasps and moans - Credence doesn't know whose voice is the raspy one, can't feel anything besides dark curls on his shoulders and rough, long fingers on his hips. He wonders if Graves knows how it sounds when he gasps Credence's name. If he knows how he looks when he throws his head back and moans.

He wonders if anyone else knows, or if he's the first.

He doubts he is.


	34. James x Lily

The first thing James notices when he enters the little flower shop is the pungent reek of flowers and pollen in the air; it's sweet and grassy with a particular crispy footnote of fresh water.

The next thing he notices is the girl behind the counter.

Wearing a bright yellow apron, the girl builds a bizarre contrast out against the tons of green and vivid flowers all around the place. She has vermillion-coloured curls that emerge like a halo around her head, cutting cheekbones that shape the general sharp contours of her face. When she turns around her eyes are the most irritating green James ever saw; dark and bright playfully mingled into each other with dots and reflections of gold.

It takes James' full attention to half-listen to the rehearsed greeting the girl recites, beyond doubt, to any customer.

She looks friendly and eager to help him; a beautiful flower arrangement sits on the counter in front of her, half-finished with greens and tulips that coil around a thick, purple satin ribbon. A grapevine clips the flowers together.

"You know the problem with grapes these days?" James says nonchalant and leans over the counter, stretching his lanky neck and cocking his head to the side. With a flick of his tongue he wets the dry cushion of his underlip, before he adds, "People just aren't  _raisin_  them right."

The girl blinks.

Her eyebrow starts to twitch.

For the horrible split of a second, the perfect straight angel face of the girl in front of him falls into blankness. Then she says,

"Have you seriously made a flower pun?"

James' mouth on the other side of the counter splits into a sharp grin while her mouth sets into a thin line.

It's the start of their story.


	35. Theodore x Susan

Theodore's dark navy suit blends him into the night. The blinding white of the streetlights throws enough light to illuminate his hands along his narrow jaw and his slender throat. He feels Susan's gaze in his nape.

"Beautiful night, isn't it?" He murmurs. A little cruel smirk lingers on his full lips.

Susan's dark brown eyes narrow, sceptical. "It's not like you would notice something like that."

"I'm not entirely without gentler feeling," he takes his gun out of the hidden spot in his coat, turns around and shoots just mere millimetres past her delicate face. The bullet brushes her cheek. In the dark behind her a man falls down; he clutches his chest, rattling for breath.

Susan doesn't blink. She stares blankly at him, almost eagerly waiting for what follows.

Something shifts like a tipping balance and he watches a droplet of blood that rolls from her full cheek.

He falls a bit in love.


	36. Pansy x Harry

Pansy spots him between two shelves of different kinds of cereals and chocolate bars, in the corner shop where she used to get free lollies as a child. He's even taller than she remembers him and has fine muscles on his nape that stand out in the fake halogen light of the shop. A navy plastic shopper basket dangles from his arm; in it a milk carton, some Oreo's and half a loaf of bread. She spots just the tip of black faded ink on his nape, a part of a tattoo that she almost forgot about.

There's a gut-wrenching feeling in her stomach that makes her want to throw up when bile rises in her throat that floods her mouth tasting of something particular sour and bitter. It's pathetic. Then Harry turns around and his green eyes pierce through hers.

She trips over her feet and runs off.


	37. Rodolphus Lestrange

"Seriously," Lucius scoffs and grimaces when Rodolphus' mobile vibrates for the dozenth time, "You look wasted enough. Tell her to piss off. Stress leads to heart attacks and shit."

Rodolphus offers him a scowl while his fingers dance over the keyboard, then answers, deadpan,"I'm sure that would bother me more if I actually had a heartbeat."


	38. Neville x Luna

This is not a version of events Neville would have thought about. Ever. Because he thought he knew her all too well, in and out. In his mind, she was supposed to become angry with him and tell him to do something and he'd be able to watch from a close distance and get her to forget about the kiss and his confession soon enough.

This was not supposed to happen.

She was not supposed to become Scamander's bride.

She was not supposed to go.


	39. Bill x Hermione

"This is Hermione."

The girl's face looks hard around the edges, the softness of her flesh almost nonexistent when she presses her lips into a thin fine line that says more about her than any words could. She clings at Ron's arm but it's not the usual way a damsel would claw her perfectly manicured nails in the fabric of his shirt. No. Bill observes the way her hand rests barely on his biceps - probably to reassure him of her presence - and her perfume fills the room with an utterly disgusting scent, something pure and far too sweet that reminds him of a mixture between honey and lilies. He remembers a summer where the scent was everywhere - in his car, on his sheets, on his skin-

He breathes it into his lungs, lets it simmer. Then he turns around and leaves the room.

It's better this way.


	40. Rabastan Lestrange

"She's a menace", Rabastan says and Lucius sighs exasperatedly. He takes the antiseptic to clean the cuts on Rabastan's skin, dabs the blood and ichor with a puffy white cotton ball.

"She's not. She's his girlfriend," he takes a bandage to support the damaged wrist, but Rabastan pulls his hand away before he can finish.

"She's a threat and we need to get rid of her."

There's a flicker of amusement in Lucius' eyes and he observes Rabastan with an intense dark stare. He watches Bellatrix and Rodolphus in the other room slow-dancing to the wedding song Narcissa chose for them. There's a certain kind of bite behind Lucius' next words. "Are you jealous?"

Rabastan opens his mouth, but not a single word comes out. He doesn't dare.


	41. Tom x Hermione - #5

Tom turns the stone three times in his hand and Hermione lies in his arms, book in her hands while reading spells in a long forgotten language that he taught her some years ago. Suddenly there's a shudder and she says, "It's cold in here."

Tom wants to ask if it's cold in the other world. In the world of the dead that he fears so much but the nights grow finally longer and they need to savour every moment, every second.

Each time Tom's heart almost stops, like a clock that doesn't keep time when she's back. As if it would try to give them some privacy before he loses her again.

It's like the time knows. His heart does too.

He wraps his arms around her and keeps silent.


	42. Lily x Narcissa - #2

"Do you want something?", Lily asks, nearly snaps, with something sharp underneath the words. And yeah, Narcissa gets it; she shouldn't act as nonchalant after their last encounter.

Still, she says, "We have a somewhat erratic poker game."

"It's nearly one in the morning," Lily points out as if Narcissa wouldn't know that herself. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to ask the girl when Narcissa ignored her messages for the last three days. Lily was clearly on her way home, probably catching up with sleep. Narcissa really shouldn't have asked.

"Someone will still be around," Narcissa hears herself say. "We're not exactly Las Vegas, but no one ever sleeps here, either."

Lily finally stops her long strides and looks back to Narcissa, eyes sharp as knives. "You realize I'll probably win."

Narcissa shrugs and flashes her a bright smile, "It's okay. I'm brilliant at cheating,"

A ghost of a smirk lingers on Lily's mouth in response.


	43. Draco x Hermione - #3

Draco looks out of his window and watches people rushing by one by one with overloaded arms and shopping bags of different kinds of labels. He's quiet. Unmoved. Pansy sighs behind him. She clicks her tongue, then leans in close to him. Outside Hermione is in the middle of balancing ten different tomes at once.

"She's not that bad, you know?"

 _I know_ , Draco thinks. His lips rest pressed together. No sound escapes.  _I know, that's the problem._


	44. Ginny x Tom - #4

Someone's blood drips off the tip of her nose.

Ginny stares at the mirror. The girl on the other side has wide eyes, bright blue and a dangerous glint. Her red hair is streaked with blood and rainwater, her skin pales in the dim halogen light the bathroom offers. Blood covers parts of her face and fingers. Like honey - thick and warm.

Tom stands right behind her. Their eyes are alike; the same glint, the same blood dripping from both of their bodies. She licks the inside of her blood-smeared mouth, and asks him what he thinks she looks like.

"Mine. You look like you're mine."

She recognizes herself.

Finally.


	45. Tom x Harry - #2

"I am not a woman." Harry's voice sways for a second. Everything about this arrogant man in front of him makes him weak and nervous.

"I know." Tom moves closer, his steps carefully calculated and his face stoic. He launches forward and grabs Harry's wrist, neither gentle nor careful.

They don't speak another word and Tom lifts his hand to lay it on Harry's neck without hesitation. The slender fingers curl around and Harry swallows. The pressure makes it harder to breathe.

It is frustrating because his body and his mind are not on the same wavelength at all right now. Perhaps they do no longer occupy the same vessel but there's something about the way Toms hand holds onto his neck and squeezes that sets his pulse racing.

Harry wonders how long they'll last this time.

If anyone notices lovebites on his neck in the shape of a Dark Mark the next day, no one comments on it.

No one cares anymore.


	46. Draco x Harry - #2

They fuck again.

Draco isn't sorry.

He wants to be. He's sure he should be, but he has always been the person fascinated by the flame until he got burned, and nothing is more the epitome of that metaphor than their relationship. They're damaged and inhuman and touch-starved and they won't back down. Never.

He's crawling into Harry's lap after a particular hard auror case and kisses him until he pleads. Then Harry flips them over and pushes him down and fucks him as if there is no tomorrow. Hard, without limits. Draco cries out and he knows he's a mess, but he wants more. He can't get enough. Can never get enough. So he wraps his legs tight around Harry's waist and tugs him closer.

Somewhere at the back of his mind, there's a part that's still functioning properly, that thinks,  _'This feels right, this feels natural. So it can't be wrong, right?'_


	47. Tom x Hermione - #6

The wall of her bedroom is white. The clock is ticking closer to the next hour, tick, tick, tick.

She closes her eyes and-

She's running.

She can't remember why or what from, but she's running and she's not alone. A white room lies behind her and throws a blinding light through a dark forest that spreads in front of her. It towers stoically, trees on trees, an army of sylvan soldiers. She tries to outsmart them; runs circles and drifts through fallen leaves, jumps over roots, dives into the mud. She's running and running and running, and never stops for a thought of reason.

There is someone behind her, someone in front of her and she can't differentiate between these two choices because he's everywhere. The shadow. The boy. The man. It changes - no,  _he_ changes. His voice grows louder when he hisses to her in a language she can't understand. Her heart beats with the rapidness of a machine gun, every shot hits bullseye. It's warm, it's sticky and her legs get heavier.

_sssaehssal-sssaehssal-sssaehssal-sssaehssal-_

-she blinks, shakes her head, feels every breath leaving her lungs while it gets colder and colder; the iciness paralyzes her thighs, her nose is running, her eyes are watering -

_hermione-hermione-hermione-hermione-_

She wakes with a bloodcurdling scream.

Her feet are covered under the blanket. No one sees her mud-smeared heels or the crumbled blood between her toes.


	48. Fred x Hermione

It is loud in the loft. Music is blasting from the stereo singing of long-forgotten loves and lives, from the risk to run away and lose yourself. Fred doesn't pay attention to anyone. He doesn't see the way Dean's head lays down in Seamus' lap and how Seamus' fingers fondle trough thick dark locks. He doesn't see Angelina - and she's beautiful isn't she - with her white dress and purple ribbons in her hair.

She comes closer and looks over his shoulder, asking, "What are you drawing?"

His hands black from charcoal, from sketches on paper, and when he looks down two endless eyes stare right back at him. A perfect nose, a mouth in a smile, wild hair around a soft face.

"Nothing," he says, and tears out the page.

"I think it's pretty," Angelina offers lightly, smoothing the crumpled paper in her hand.

Fred bites the inside of his lower lip, forces himself to inhale and exhale.

"I wasn't asking you."

She laughs, so easily, as if there was no war pushing down on their shoulders.  
"No," she says, "You weren't."


	49. Cho x Lavender

"What do you think it was? A dream?" Lavender looks over to Cho who's in the middle of refuelling the old BMW. They're alone in the night, in the middle of nowhere on a cheap highway gas station and Cho curses when some of the gasoline drips down on her four hundred dollar Louboutin sneakers.

Lavender snorts and bites in the Snickers she bought for the way.

"Not a dream," Cho finally grunts and pushes the pump back in the bracket where it squeaks lonely against the wind. "Dreams are for people that are awake."

She curls her tongue around the last word, carefully to pronounce it with a certain kind of finality.

"You make no sense."

"Mens numquam dormitat."

"Now you make even less sense." Exasperated Lavender throws the brown paper of her Snickers in the bin, her skin a strange shade of green from the fake halogen lights of the gas station. Cho doesn't bother to turn around; her laugh is high and sharp, like flinders. Lavender bristles.

"It means my mind never sleeps." Closing the filler cap, she breathes the scent of old petrol and rubber - it's not just the gas station, it clings to Lavender too.

"If you don't sleep, what do you do?"

"My mind has the scary capability of being dark and twisted. I see people in colours. Blue, Red - Luna, Parvati. You."

"If Luna is Blue, and Parvati is Red, what colour is mine?"

Cho throws a glance over her leather-clad shoulder, just enough for Lavender to see the arch of a fine, straight nose and the peaks of sharp, flashing teeth.

"I dream of you in colours that don't exist yet."

Lavender's heart skips a beat.


	50. Viktor x Hermione

There is death everywhere. Mud, blood, despair. Each night a new nightmare comes to life. Each time a new supernatural creature that wants to maul them. Or kill them. Or take over the world.

Hermione is tired.

She watches the pale skin between Viktor's shoulder blades which stick out like spiked angel wings and how the water from the shower turns dirty brown from blood underneath him. He looks always beautiful, otherworldly, but there is something particularly gorgeous about him covered in blood and bruises. It paints him hungry and haunted, almost like Hermione feels.

Hermione blinks, the moment lost. She turns around and starts to scrub the dirt from her hands.


	51. Draco x Hermione - #4

Draco's searching for something. For someone. Years rush by; a split second, a blink of his eye. There's no magic running through his veins anymore. Not in this life. Immortality, in the end, always comes with a price.

He finds her grave, finally, withered and forgotten. He doesn't look back, but he can't forget either.

There's still the smell of her kiss and Hogwarts' library on his lips.


	52. Newt x Percival

Newt makes his way back to the bar and orders a Bloody Mary. He downs it in one go, and licks lime and tomato off his top lip. The beat of the music is thrumming from the top floor and the liquids in the glasses tremble like they're caught in an earthquake. Wild and untamed, the same way his hair falls into his forehead. Graves watches him with heavy eyes, dark and seductive until the grey fades and pure lust remains.

He offers Newt a drink - bright powder blue with turquoise crystals in it, something he never saw before - and Newt takes it, drinks, falls.


	53. Ginny x Tom - #5

It's a bit like Romeo and Juliet, the ongoing war between Good and Evil. Ginny is seventeen and she never loved a man before, not the way that she loves Tom. The enemy. The Capulet. Voldemort.

Harry gets into her room at four a.m and Ginny sighs. She wasn't sleeping. She wasn't expecting any sleep tonight.

She shifts on her bed to give Harry enough space to sit down. There is worry in his eyes. Fear. Trouble. They sit in uncomfortable, cramped silence but Harry is warm and smells of exhaustion and fatigue.

"The war is no place for love."

"No", Ginny says firmly, because Harry expects it and she loves Harry. She really does. Not the same way as she loves Tom, but she loves him. If it wasn't for Harry, she wouldn't be here anymore. Not for Ron, not for the Order, just for Harry.

Harry makes a little humming sound and kisses her forehead as if she is a little child that needs comfort after a really bad nightmare. Then he leaves the room without another word.

The blanket is still warm from where he was sitting and Ginny shifts away from it, closes her eyes and knits her fingers together. She counts the seconds, embraces the darkness.

The room is quiet but for the easy sound of her breathing, and she turns into it and sleeps.


	54. Tom x Harry - #3

Being in love is a dangerous thing.

It makes you vulnerable and captivated and angry while you wear his name like a mouthful of apologies carefully tucked behind the bleak row of hungry teeth. He will become your prayers and your sins and when people tell stories about how Lucifer fell because he loved god the most, you better prepare for the fall.

Because love will strip you to your bones.

Love destroys you.

Harry half-lies, half-sits while sleeping in Tom's uncomfortable armchair, head slumped down, drooling all over the expensive leather of Tom's jacket that is sprawled above him. He reeks of a long night with beer and fear clinging to his pores and the stinging sweat of adrenaline that slowly rushes off.

Tom wishes, greedily, to run his fingers over the inside of Harry's wrists and feel his pulse like braille on his fingertips. But he keeps his distance and watches Harry from the other side of the room. The orange light of the lamp paints Harry's shapes like something holy and divine.

It's enough for now, isn't it?


	55. Sirius x Remus

"My brother told me that the dead appear to us in the stars," Sirius murmurs and rolls a cigarette between his fingers. He lights it, takes a deep breath to puff little white clouds in the cold air. They both watch as the smoke curls in the darkness. Then Sirius says, glassy-eyed, "It's the only way they can make us see them. A projection beamed from a great distance, like the light that shines at us from a dead star. We're beloved children of the stars - It's a punishment, don't you think so?"

Remus doesn't answer.


	56. Tom x Harry - #4

The table is covered in 86 different photo prints. Some of them are blurry, some of them just detailed shots. A special one lies on top of them all. Tom takes it carefully and pins it on a nearby wall - which had previously been covered in photographs of his 34 victims, sorted by date and now carefully packed away in labelled boxes - that is now a white empty spot in the corner of his office.

It's a full body picture of a boy with black hair and forest green eyes that laughs wide, eyes glistening with little fragments of the November sun.

He can't look away, not even hours later.


	57. Scorpius x Rose

They kiss on his third visit.

She tastes of parchment and lemons and saltwater and her taste linger even hours later on his tongue.

He doesn't regret it.


	58. Draco x Harry - #3

Draco doesn't know what Harry wants from him. This is all starting to feel rather too much like masochism and he's not even sure he completely understands why. It has been said by several people, at entirely separate accounts, that Harry Potter is a "force of nature". Draco can agree with them.

There's a message on his phone and Draco replies,  _'We should stop this.'_

_'Say stop. Next time.'_

_'Not going to be a next time, so no problem.'_

There's a pause, a full minute without a reply and Draco thinks, almost, there wouldn't be an answer anymore. But then his phone starts to vibrate.

_'Trust me. There's always going to be a next time with you.'_

And really, how could Draco argue with that?


	59. James x Lily - #2

_'I need a date for a charity gala display.'_

Lily stops checking her emails on her phone, sipping on a very strong Latte Macchiato.

_'No'_

_'You don't have to dance or give money. I mean, we could have sex in a bathroom, but that's honestly up to you.'_

_'I hate everyone at these events. Including you. And the 'charity' moniker is just stuck on to make everyone feel good about themselves, not because they care.'_

_'One night, free champagne, and sex if you want it. Come on Evans, I don't actually have that many people left who tolerate me once we've got our clothes back on.'_

Lily knows she will give in. She knew it from the beginning; it's frustrating.

_'Who says I tolerate you? Two hours, then we're leaving. I'm sure I can think of more entertaining ways how we can spend the night anyway.'_

_'Three hours. And I'm sure you can :)'_


	60. Draco x Hermione - #5

The invitation arrives in a dark green velvet envelope with a silver seal that holds the ends together. She eyes the way a snake coils on the sigil while alchemistic symbols form a circle in the background. The letter inside is the same colour as the envelope and the words contrast in bright silver that breaks on certain ink stains to reflect in different kinds of colours. Like a kaleidoscope. Like the stars.

_Let's have dinner._

She throws the parchment in the dustbin and puts it on fire.


	61. Theodore x Harry

"So basically you get an E-Mail with a skull symbol and then they implant a chip in your wrist?"

Harry watches as Theo puts another hand full of salty crisps between his lips. He chews, then washes them down with the rest of his soft drink. He shakes his head.

"It's not just a skull. It's called the Dark Mark. It's the sign that you're one of the inner circle."

Harry taps his pen nervously against the notebook in his lap while Theo throws the bag of crisps - or what remains of them - on the coffee table and brushes little salty crumbs off his fingers.

"Look Potter, you can't choose them. They choose you. You get an E-Mail with all the details. Time, place, and what else you need to know. When you get there they implant a little chip in your wrist that works as your ID card. They scan it each time before you step into the club."

Theo stretches his arm out and shows him a tiny scar, almost non-visible to the naked eye.

"How could you let them do this?"

"It's no big deal, really."

"Why did you do it?"

Harry feels as if he misses something. Something important that he overlooks in the big pattern. When Theo replies his words are carefully chosen.

"They promise dreams but they deliver nightmares."


	62. Draco x Hermione - #6

Cormac McLaggen rushes through the door the moment Draco pushes his hand under her skirt. She doesn't hesitate but instead raises her wand, "Incarcerous."

Silver ropes float out of the tip of her wand and wind around Cormac's body.

Draco curses, annoyed, and takes his hand back again. Hermione watches as slender fingers run through his whitish hair.

"Great. How are we supposed to explain this?"

She tilts her head and studies the different shades of blond in Cormac's hair, observes the way his eyes grow larger, the way the fear creeps in.

"We don't," she finally murmurs. She kneels down and pushes the tip of her wand against the temple of golden locks. "Imperio."


	63. Tom x Hermione - #7

"Where's 'Mione?", Harry asks as soon as he returns from the restrooms. His glance wanders from Luna and Neville which are both still buried with their noses in the menu card, to Ginny who writes messages on her phone and finally to Ron.

"She's outside. On the phone with Mr. Oxford."

Harry turns around and looks out the window. He watches Hermione talking and chatting with pinkish cheeks and gleaming caramel eyes.

"What does he look like?" Ginny asks curiously.

"She never saw him. Bet it's a seventy-year-old pervert with a bald head. Or perhaps he has some serious disease that disfigured him completely. I once saw a pic about someone without a nose that looked more snake than human," Ron snorts.

Ginny laughs while she picks imaginary crumbs off her scarf. "Kinky."

Harry rubs a hand over his face and sits down to blocks Ron's view out of the window. Hermione is happy, that's all that counts.


	64. Parvati x Lavender

Parvati never knew the stars had a flavour until she kissed Lavender.

They taste like self-destruction and ancient fire, ambitions and ambrosia She savours it, licks salt crystals of her lips.

She wakes up in silken sheets, royal blue and Lavender's ceiling is covered in stars, a celestial map with burning dots on a dark background. Lavender lies naked beside her, still sleeping.

Parvati elopes right after.


	65. Remus x Lily

The first time Remus changes back into a man in front of Lily, a holy silence vibrates around them.

Lily looks at him with something so utterly blank and insane that Remus doesn't know how to react.

Sirius, at least, had had the good sense to be disgusted. Sirius, at least, had been smart enough to see him for what he really is; a broken shell of a human being. Hungry, desperate, eager to break open everyone around him to taste blood.

But Lily's wide-eyed fear and hurt does something to him that makes it harder to breathe. He senses Lily's discomfort from the other side of the room and wonders how long it'll take Lily to just fear him.

Everything changes.

He notes, with the bitter taste of betrayal on his tongue, that Lily has trouble swallowing too.


	66. Antonin x Mulciber

"Would you kill to save a life?" The question is innocent enough but Mulciber hears the faint trace of a warning in the words. This is exactly what he loathes most about Antonin: the ugly truth that balances between them. He's the hollow chest and the bloody knuckles that leave behind after a rough day. Broken bones and spiteful confessions from cherry lips on Sunday duty. Antonin knows exactly how to infect him inch by inch, sense by sense. Mulciber bristles.

"The world is not black and white, white and black. It's grey and sometimes it's rotten, Dolohov," he says tentative, testing the words on his lips and trying to decipher any of Antonin's reactions to this. The slight increase of his breath, the crunching sound of his knuckles from gripping the bottle in his hand too tight, the flick of his tongue over the dry cushion of lips.

"So you think the rotten should die?"

There's no absolution waiting for him anymore. Mulciber closes his eyes and listens to Antonin's heartbeat across the room - strong and honest and eager. He doesn't answer.


	67. Rabastan & Rodolphus Lestrange - #2

Rabastan wakes to a noise.

His world flares up in fire. The pain echoes in different shades of orange and red that compete against each other with dark splotches that shape a human body in front of him; Rodolphus. He can hear his heart beating strong and frightened and  _terrified_  against the fragile cage of ribs. There's old blood on Rabastan's forehead, blood on his nose, blood on his chin. Cuts all over his body and a bloody trail - crusted and dried - down to his stomach. He looks like hell and feels even worse. Raw flesh in a raging storm.

Rodolphus dabs some iodine on another cut right under his brother's ribs. The burning sensation reminds Rabastan that he's still alive. Still breathing. Still human.

"You want to say something," Rabastan murmurs between tired lips, words slurred at the edges. Rodolphus grunts but only daps the cotton ball deeper in the wound, rubbing at the skin until it feels worn and ruined. His breath changes.

"You could have been dead," Rodolphus finally says. It's a hissing sound, full of desperate frustration. "You could have died, man."

As if to emphasize his words Rodolphus takes his brother's face in both hands and presses his fingers right in the bruises under his eyes. Rabastan's eyes sting but he keeps them open; wide and green. He remembers that one time they fought before; it was ruthless and cutthroat and a dozen other things that he fears Rodolphus will see once he gets too close.

"You can't do this to me."

"Rod-"

"No, I mean it. You  _can't_  do this to me."

For the terrible split of a moment, Rabastan is certain Rodolphus is about to kiss him. He's already anticipating the hard press of lips against his own and he's ready to release all of his anguish and fear into the other one- when Rodolphus pulls away.

The warmth of his fingers still lingers on Rabastan's skin but Rodolphus is gone, his heart half across the room already. He can still feel Rodolphus' eyes like a feverish flush on his face.

"You can't do this."

It hurts but it's better this way.

He falls asleep to the sound of Rodolphus' heartbeat at his side.


	68. Marcus x Oliver

**The Lie:  
** It's just a kiss.

* * *

 **The Truth:  
** Long, slender fingers tug and rip at his hair, bury their fingertips painfully into Oliver's skull until they scratch over his scalp and leave a tingling sensation on his skin. Marcus' mouth is wet and warm on his own but there's nothing tender between them. Lips gashing and gnawing, tearing until there's the copper taste of blood that mixes with booze and fresh water. Oliver doesn't register the throbbing pain of his underlip and neither does Marcus care, if the way he bites down gives anything away.

A shudder runs through Oliver's body and he feels the little strands of his dark curls in his nape rise when Marcus' pushes even closer until cold black leather shuffles against the stubble on his jaws. Oliver loses it; he moans into the kiss.

They need to come up for air. Oliver is grateful because his lungs are burning from the loss of oxygen. He leans his spine and head back against the stone wall of the dirty back alley next to the Hog's Head. He needs to breathe, needs to _fucking_ breathe, so deep and Marcus' scent is overwhelming, is fucking everywhere and this is not right, this is too much, too much, too much-

It is nearly satisfying as he watches Marcus' face fall. His eyes grow rounder. Bigger. Mouth drops open and broken, hasted breaths escape his trembling lips.

When Marcus starts to run, Oliver does nothing to stop him. It's a study in disappointment.


	69. Draco x Harry - #4

One night, in the darkness, sheltered from the furious rain and shielded from any glances, Draco observes Harry from behind the curtains of his tattoo shop. Unnoticed, he spins the unlit cigarette between his fingers, inhales the musky scent of his own aftershave that clings in the collar of his leather jacket.

The pelting rain does nothing to Harry while he locks up his shop. Long-fingered, soil-stained, elegant hands clasp around a silver key, navy polo shirt slowly soaking from the water.

The water traces the muscles between Harrys' shoulder blades. Droplets catch in his nape and run down. His brown skin glistens softly in the dim, shifting yellowish streetlight-

Draco swallows and clenches his fist.

The cigarette in his fingers splits.


	70. Albus D. x Gellert G. - #2

"I once thought I could save you," Gellert whispers into Albus' ear, lips coated in red. Dark eyes hooded, sharp and savage. His teeth bite sharply into the shell until Albus hisses and tries to yank his head back. Gellert holds him still. "But it seems you damned me."

He flicks a knife out and cuts another line slowly into Albus' skin. The pink flesh of his meat glistens wetly from blood in the barely lit room. Albus hisses from pain - or moans. Gellert ducks his head down and flicks his tongue out to taste the blood that bubbles forth. Magic always tastes salty.

 _'This is how we do communion'_ , Albus thinks and bares his throat even wider, satisfied, when Gellert comes down and drags his teeth over the vein on his neck until his pulse throbs painfully.  _'This is how we pray.'_


	71. Tom x Hermione - #8

**one.**

There's a bright white neon bulb that casts unnatural shades of blue on sterile walls and metallic instruments. Tubes and wires are linked from an engine close by to his head, buzzing with electricity.

The light catches in dark hazelnut curls that fall in wild cascades around a feminine face with healthy rosy cheeks and a pointed nose. Her eyes are hidden behind a small pair of glasses but he can see daps of caramel and walnut in the brown and when she speaks her shoulders move under the thick fabric of her white doctor tunic.

"Hello, Tom."

"My name is Voldemort," he spits. There's something hard in her eyes, something angry and a second later she pushes a button on an engine.

His world starts to spin.

* * *

**two.**

Tom opens his eyes.

Data. Files. Pictures. Wool's Orphanage. Two children. A Cave. Water. Cliffs. Dennis Bishop's body that turns red and blue and different shades of violet while he desperately tries to gasp for air when his throat and lungs contract furiously. Little Amy Benson's face that transforms into a shrieking mask while tears run down her pale cheeks. She begs and screams as the water grasps violently at her body to push her down in the sea again and again. Her arms are covered in scratch marks of bleeding fingertips from scraping over rocks and soil and sand.

Then he's in the laboratory again, bright white neon light and he's screaming when raging white pain shoots through his head in waves.

For the fragment of a second, he can see the doctor's face again, round and healthy with rosy cheeks, before an injection puts him back to sleep.

* * *

**three.**

"What's your name?" The doctor with the bushy brown hair asks him.

He spits between blood-bitten lips, "Voldemort."

The answer doesn't seem to impress her. She stares down at him with what feels like all the world's hate pressed into two eyes. She pushes a button on an engine that is joint to his head, and his world descends into darkness again.

* * *

**four.**

Tom opens his eyes.

Data. Files. Pictures. A girl. A boy. The Girl's lavatory. A dungeon. A chamber. Basilisk. Slytherin. Myrtle's eyes that rip wide open before her rigid body hits the tiles with a loud thump that echoes from the hollow walls. Parseltongue that slides from his lips in a perfect hissing sound, almost like a song. A giant snake coils at his feet, then reaches up to the ceiling. The gut-wrenching feeling when he needs a solution to his problem. That he needs someone to blame to fix this mess. Panic. Terror. Hagrid's face as soon as he realises that he'll be expelled. The spider that flees with high speed through Hogwarts and into the forest afterwards. His own hollow laugh; evil, cruel, bone-splitting.

Then he's in the laboratory again, bright white neon light and he's screaming when raging white pain shoots through his head in waves.

For the fragment of a second, he can see gentle, slender fingers before an injection puts him back to sleep.

* * *

**five.**

The clattering of heels on marble tiles wakes him. There's a voice who asks for his name. It's warm like honey. He doesn't answer. Her eyes soften up, just a tad, before she pushes the button on the engine again. Agony flares through his head, spins his world and his memory starts to run backwards in crooked bright flashes. Fits. Starts. Ends. Hard as the noise of colliding spells. New memories, old memories - they ghost like the smoke of a forest fire in the back of his mind. There's something he can almost touch, almost smell, almost, almost -

his memory runs backwards faster, faster and -

* * *

**six.**

Tom opens his eyes.

Data. Files. Pictures. A mansion. A family. Little Hangleton. A man with his face. Older. Arrogant. Tom Sr.'s skin that becomes grey like ashes as soon as the green light hits him in the face. The shrill sound of his grandmother's voice that pierces the air. The bodies of his grandparents fall right to his father's sides on the magenta Persian carpet. Bright green light glistens on the top of his wand with little dust grains full of magic.

Then he's in the laboratory again, bright white neon light and he's screaming when raging white pain shoots through his head in waves.

For the fragment of a second, he can see wild caramel locks that fall open in cascades over her shoulders before an injection puts him back to sleep.

* * *

**seven.**

"What's your name?" His voice slurs in his doze. He's in a state between half-asleep and half-awake where his memories haunt him while they change and alter. They transform but he can't answer, can't find the words before he falls back into the land of dreams again. This time he doesn't feel her push the button.

* * *

**eight.**

Tom opens his eyes.

Data. Files. Pictures. An office. A man. Dumbledore. Lemon drops. Fawkes. A pensieve. Dumbledore's face tells him  _no, he's not good enough,_  with sad and tired eyes, that have disappointment clearly written all over them. Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem feels like a grave in his pocket. The room of requirement with tons of hidden things; a cabinet, busts of old headmasters, broken and damaged furniture, chipped bottles, bloodstained axes and shelves full of books and tomes and dark arts and - his legs find the way on their own, coil around the aisles until the diadem finds its place. There's another curse on his tongue, something as bitter as rejection so he makes sure that no teacher will stay for more than a year. He leaves Hogwarts under Dumbledore's judging eyes.

Then he's in the laboratory again, bright white neon light and he's screaming when raging white pain shoots through his head in waves.

For the fragment of a second, he can see her eyes and how the muscles around the eyelids soften up before an injection puts him back to sleep.

* * *

**nine.**

The memories feel like acid rain to his brain. They're slowly killing his mind and burn it to ashes and dust. The neon light flickers alien shades of blue on the sterile room and the doctor's voice sounds hollow, far, far away when she asks, her face above his, "What's your name?"

He needs a second to think straight, needs to gather and sort the pieces of information that flood his mind at once. His pulse throbs rigid in his head, painful to an extreme that makes him want to scream and cry or scratch his own eyes out.

He wants to reply but the words die on his lips.

She sighs, then pushes the button a second later and he welcomes the emptiness with open arms.

* * *

**ten.**

Tom opens his eyes.

Data. Files. Pictures. A perfect lush lawn. A family. A little boy. Forest green eyes. A terrible bone-splitting shriek. James Potter's body that breaks as soon as the bright green hits him, his glasses snapping under the heels of his Italian boots when he climbs over his corpse. Lily Potter's screech that echoes in unison with his triumphant cackle, loud and disgusting. The little boy looks up with bright, forest green eyes. His small fingers try to snatch the end of his wand. He lifts his wand and-

Then he's in the laboratory again, bright white neon light and he's screaming when raging white pain shoots through his head in waves.

For the fragment of a second, he can see smooth and tender lips that whisper his name in something aching to comfort, before an injection puts him back to sleep.

* * *

**eleven.**

There's a bright white neon bulb that casts unnatural shades of blue on sterile walls and metallic instruments. Tubes and wires are linked from an engine close by to his head, buzzing with electricity.

The light catches in dark hazelnut curls that fall in wild cascades around a feminine face with healthy rosy cheeks and a pointed nose. Her eyes are hidden behind a small pair of glasses but he can see daps of caramel and walnut in the brown and when she speaks her shoulders move under the thick fabric of her white doctor tunic.

"What's your name?"

"Tom." His head feels heavy. Crushed. The bright neon light burns his eyes. He closes them to reduce the agony. His voice breaks, trembles. "My name is Tom."

"Hello, Tom." She takes a deep breath and the lines around her fine curved lips soften up.

He opens his mouth to shape a reply but the words fall silent on his lips. There are delicate slender fingers running through his sweaty dark hair and her fingernails fondle his scalp slowly, almost soothingly.

"Hello, Doctor Granger."

She smiles, pushes a nearby button on an engine and his world starts to spin again.


	72. Tom x Hermione #9

214 arrests in the last two years and people call him the new Sherlock. Inspector Tom Marvolo Riddle is twenty-seven, brilliant to the point of half-suicidal, devilishly handsome with sharp facial features and dark hair.

An assassin kills five highly esteemed members of the House of Lords, clean shot right through the brain. Tom is sure they’re overlooking something. He examines all of the evidence himself, rolled up sleeves and tie already dropped on some pile of records.

He falls asleep on top of some research about the impact of acetone bullets on human skin and when he wakes there’s a neon yellow post-it neatly glued to his microscope, reading ‘Every fairytale needs a good old-fashioned villain.’

He rips it off and starts to smirk.

* * *

Hermione Jean Granger is twenty-five, a bit of a black widow, and twice as cold-blooded as she appears to be. She files her nails with the precision of an assassin, takes two sugars and milk in her coffee and can put a gun together blindfolded in less than a minute. Tom has seen those fingers move with the delicacy of a pianist. They look as gentle around the trigger of a gun as they look tender while they curl around his own throat.

He can’t let her go.

* * *

They kiss the third time he catches her and it feels like chewing on bullets.

Her hands yank at his hair and he lifts her up, presses her against the dirty wall of the warehouse.

* * *

He lets her get away.

* * *

She shows up at his flat two weeks later, Starbucks coffee in hand and little white snowflakes still glistening in her wild brown locks.

“You’re awfully sure of yourself“, his voice is steady and firm and his eyes follow every movement of her swaying hips. She shows a bit too much skin under the short skirt as soon as she slips out of the heavy winter coat.

She’s approaching the bedroom door, throws a glance over her shoulder and the smirk is far too dark, far too dangerous. “Tell me you don’t like it and I promise I’ll stop.“ She opens the door and her blouse slides down her shoulders until it rests on the old wooden floor.

Tom follows, silent.

* * *

A week later she murders ten people of the MI6 - all at the same time, right on the last day of the year when all were rushing home to celebrate the New Year with their families and friends. It makes this scene even crueller, like something out of an awful horror story.

_Do you like my present?_  says a text on his iPhone when he turns around to grab his coat, fingers steady when the next one arrives.  _I made it especially for you._

He can’t stop the smirk on his lips and there’s a dark shudder down his spine, something that makes him want to go and see the bodies to look at their disfigured faces, at the blood that spilt out of them. He wants to worship it, soak it all up because she made it for him and him alone.

_How sentimental of you._

There’s a pause and he almost thinks that this was not the answer she was expecting. But then his phone vibrates and he laughs, all doubts removed.

Hurry home once you’re done. You don’t want me to start without you, not on your birthday, right?

* * *

“I’m not going to work with you“, Tom says.

"I didn’t ask you to work with me“, she whispers. There’s something predatory behind those dark brown eyes. She presses her fingertips right in the crook of his neck, at the edge of his pulse, pushes her thumb under his chin, straddles his lap and runs her other hand through his dark lock to yank at them until their eyes are locked.

"Then what are you asking?“, he moans with wide brown eyes.

"Don’t ask questions you don't like the answer to.“ She kisses him and he doesn’t answer.

* * *

In the morning, she’s gone.


	73. Tom x Hermione - 10

One time, Tom tries to burn the dark mark onto her neck, his wand at her cervical artery, the tip burning red but inches away from her delicate skin that bruises far too fast. She curses him in a swift motion, throws him once across the room and his answer follows right back, hits her right in the calf, draws blood.

There’s an awful, tense silence and Tom’s eyes turn red, grey, red, grey, and a moment later he apparates right beside her to devour her mouth, ravishes it until her lips are red-swollen and bleeding.

There’s no Dark Mark on her skin, but marks in shape of his teeth, his fingers, his lips.


	74. Albus D. x Gellert G. - 3

"You can't stop me," Gellert tells him. His lips taste like the golden sun, his eyes are colder than steel. Another hour where Albus should have said stop.

"I can't let you win, either," Albus says, and his voice is slurred, sleepy and it's barely above a whisper. The sheets are worn, his head is a pounding mess and he feels as if the darkness makes a handful of lying promises.

Gellert's lips twitch. Albus can see it even in the dark of the room, even without the moon shining through thick glasses. It's not a smirk but it feels like a crack in the armour.

"We're at an impasse, then," Gellert says, voice not louder then Albus'. He sounds almost relieved. Neither of them truly want to contemplate where this is all really going.

_If no one draws first blood then maybe no one ever has to bleed._

Albus licks his lips, which taste of bad booze, the faint smell of marihuana and something copper. He lets out a sigh. "There are worse places to be."


	75. Marcus x Oliver - 2

He goes to a bar that night.

Because sometimes he does stupid things in a stupid world dominated by stupid people.

So he goes to a bar and has a few drinks until he can't differ if the lights are blue and the boy's eyes are violet or if it's the other way around and he ends up in a cheap, backroom with a toilet that's far too small for two people and that reeks of piss and sweat and bleach. He's on his knees before he realizes it and someone opens a zipper in front of him; chiselled jawline, slender shoulders, large, long-fingered hands that grab his back head and force him closer - he rips his lips on the sharp metal of the zipper but the other one is oblivious to it. The stranger pushes him down and the next moment Oliver closes his lips around a thick, pumping cock.

No underwear. Oliver wraps his mouth around the head of the cock, flutters and slithers his tongue under the forehead. The other above him digs his nail hard against his skull, pushes him even closer until Oliver's nose lies flat against the other's skin; the cock pulsates inside of him and pushes at his throat.

Fortunately, he wasn't born with a gag reflex.

Oliver closes his eyes and relaxes his throat. For the split of a moment in the haze of alcohol and sex where the lines blur and smudge together, he wishes the finger in his hair were Flints'.


	76. Draco x Harry - 5

Draco's good mood crashes head first to the bottom of the pit at 8:18 AM, when he arrives at his favourite coffee shop that sells Fairtrade coffee and spelt-walnut-cookies just to find it closed. On a Monday morning. The shop is closed up and lies dark on the pathway with a bright yellow 'CLOSED FOR RENOVATION' sign dangling from the front door. He curses under his breath and tries the door just in case, but it doesn't move. The hour on his iPhone shows 8:19 AM by now and he knows, that if he wants to get any coffee before his politic lesson, he needs to get it now. Fast.

So that's the reason he's standing in a ridiculously long queue in the nearby Starbucks, patience non-existent, gnawing at the inside of his mouth while he tries to find anything on the menu card that catches his eye.

The shop is huge with a couple of tables near large windows that spill bright daylight over dark wood. A large chalkboard easel that usually sits on the sidewalk is still propped against a wall. It shows a nice chalk drawing of a cup with some amarettinis. A Ke$ha song starts to play and the music swirls through the room with just the tiniest bit of crackling from oversized speakers on the wall. It is catchy, but not really easing his mood at all.

"Can I help you?"

Draco looks up to see the barista smirking at him with something close to a shark-bit and he's suddenly reminded of a sharp razor, shining steel that catches in the neon lights of cheap bathrooms. Only then he registers deep green eyes with a hint of mischievous playfulness. He catches the first thing on the list that sounds promising enough.

"Venti, triple sweet, non-fat, Caramel Macchiato with extra whipped cream and caramel and chocolate drizzle on top."

There's an awful silence that is underlined with occasional breaths and blinks out of long dark eyelashes (which should be forbidden for a guy, really), and it does something to the barista because suddenly his grin turns into a smirk and the edges get sharper, the eyes brighter. He enjoys himself far too much. Fucker.

"What a sweet tooth, huh Apollo?", the barista says and Draco does the first thing that comes to his mind.

He lashes out.

"That's not my name."

A finely curved eyebrow raises up to the barista's hairline. The smirk never falters.

"Alright. So what is it?"

Draco notices the Sharpie in his hand that dangles between two fingers, hovering over a plastic cup that has the obvious emerald green logo slicing through pure transparency - it feels strangely like a betrayal to buy this overpriced epitome of capitalism and for a second he thinks about dropping his morning coffee entirely for today. The thought seems reassuring for the split of a second, and then he remembers that he won't even make it to the second period without enough caffeine or sugar in his system. So he stays.

Green-eyes still waits for his name with an incredible portion of patients that makes Draco's temper boil. He has absolutely no endurance nor the time to spell his name, so he uses the first that comes to his mind in an attempt to spare them both the embarrassment of wrong pronunciation.

"Richard Brook."

The Sharpie stops shortly and the barista gives him an incredulous look. It doesn't last long though; a second later it scratches squeaking over the cup again before the man fills it with a couple of ingredients. When Draco needs to pay half a fortune for the drink, he's reminded why he usually boycotts the shop.

Green-eyes doesn't speak again until he's already halfway out of the door and when he calls after him in a cheerful, sunny tenor to visit them soon again, Draco does his best to ignore him.

He's halfway through the second period when he notices the name on his cup. It reads:  _Moriarty._

The grin that splits Draco face can entirely be blamed on the sugar shock he most certainly has.


	77. Marcus x Oliver - 3

Oliver pushes his face down in the sink and is greeted with gelid water that catches in the outgrown buzzcut strands of his dark brown hair. Thick water droplets run down his cheeks to his neck and Oliver rubs over his skin until it stings. His eyes are frozen solid to his wrist, his left one, where a carved letter flashes dirty and crumpled against his skin; he traces the swirls of the upper curve, scratches over the round bend before it stops harsh and cutting in a final dash.

**_M._ **

A single, intruding, abnormal, far too beautiful  ** _M._**  that cuts through his skin.

God, how he hates it.

Oliver grabs for a blunt blade, the same he used to carve out Percy's tattooed letter on his right wrist, and starts to press it down in his skin. It starts with a scratch, blood that floods over his arm, his hands in a thick juice and he presses further, scrapes and craves while the pain gets unbearable. The blade drowns in the softness of his flesh, in the rot of his veins, ruins him - but the  ** _M._**  stays. A solemn, determined, innocent symbol that beats and thrums hard in the rhythm of his rushing blood.

Frustrated, he chucks the blade in the sink and watches the blood how it drips down in the water, drawing circles and swirls in the cold clear.

The  ** _M._**  still stays.

* * *

Fate is a sly mistress and she seems to enjoy plucking Oliver's heartstrings like harp strings.

He comes home from the weekly grocery shopping to find the notebook he lost accompanied by a pearly white paper card in his letterbox. He ignores the card first but skims the book rash and precisely, looking for any smudges or torn out pages - there are none.

Drawing a breath of relief, Oliver pushes the door to his scabby flat open and kicks it shut with the heel of his foot. He doesn't pay attention to the card in particular and when he spots it hours later still lying innocent and clean between old Chinese Takeout boxes and oil rags, a queasy feeling spreads through his body.

There's something strange about the card, almost virtuous and when his colour stained fingers grab the pristine paper, it feels almost sacrilegious. The wild pounding of his heart threatens to swallow him whole as soon as he flips the card. It doesn't say much, an obvious address Oliver recognises as a coffee around the street and a date pointing to tomorrow.

What catches him off guard and sends him spiralling down a cascade of emotions, is the name at the end of the card.

**_M. Flint_ **

Capital, hard-edged  ** _M_**  with sharp ends and a long stroke down. The pain in his wrist is nothing compared to the panic that burns through his lungs and veins.

He crumples up the paper, throws it on the floor and flees in the bedroom.

The paper lies intruding on the old wood but he can't bring himself to lift it up and burn it to ashes. He can't.


	78. Draco x Hermione - 7

**[letter one - Hermione]  
** Ankara, 28. February.

The handwriting is messy, poignant and cut at the edges, almost as if the writer wrote it in a haste and without the time to think about his punctuation or synopsis. It's a bright peach postcard that shows the Anitkabir on the surface with a clear blue sky. It reads:

_Did you know that a Spider Lily is called the flower of separation? The leaves and the flowers can never meet. The flower blossoms as soon as the leaves are withered away. Even in death, they seem to miss each other like lovers. They remind me of us. Yearning for each other, but never together._

* * *

**[letter two - Draco]  
** Rhodes, 09. March.

Four lines are crossed with a single thick slash, still readable, a sign that the writer wasn't sure if to cross them out completely or not. The sentences are slopped, hasty and the end is a bit blurred from a drop of water; the edges of the blue ink flow into the burns with ease. The last sentence is clear and clean, emphasised with neat strokes. Important. The postcard shows different Greek locations, nothing particular, everything rather plain. It reads:

~~_do you ever think_ ~~

~~_I still want to kiss you when_ ~~

~~_your hands around my throat_ ~~

~~_I always want to kiss you_ ~~

_What do you expect of me? A mouthful of apologies? If that's what you want I'll carve I'm sorry into the pink flesh of my skin. Read it. Trace it. Kiss it. It's all I have to give. Empty words on empty paper._


	79. Draco, Ron x Hermione

The invitation is a bright periwinkle blue with gold letters, adornments and beautiful navy calligraphic illustrations around the border. Draco hates it instantly. Once his eyes trace the swirly H of Hermione's name that curls around Ron's, he can taste bile on the back of his tongue.

"That's tasteless", Blaise presses out between clenched teeth and Draco can see Pansy nod before she pushes a single black strain behind her ear. She wets her lips.

"You should throw it away Draco. Don't do this to yourself."

"Yeah", Blaise says again and props his leg to one of the unused chairs around the table, kicking at an old Chinese take-out tub in the process. "Try to forget about it. About her. She's not worth more of your time. Don't let her take your dignity too."

Draco gives an affirmative grunt but it doesn't sound persuading, not even to his own ears and his nails instantly find their way to the scar on his right wrist where her letter once was. He scratches until it throbs and burns. Pansy makes a move and Draco can feel her hands around his skin, batting Draco's self-destructive coping mechanism away. For some time Draco lets her, then he yanks his arm free and rumples the invitation in his hand.

He's well aware, that Hermione used him like a razor blade -  _fast, cutting, reusable, replaceable_  - and nothing more.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see Blaise's gentle, although satisfying smile.

It doesn't mean anything.


	80. Tom x Hermione - 11

**anomaly**

Lush green culms peck the soft flesh of her soles and caress her rosy skin with tender strokes. She's standing in the middle of a field, her feet grounded to the earth while her toes dig in the squishy dirt of mud and soil that catches in wet little crumbs between the hollows of her toes. A soft breeze wafts around her body, swirls around her ankles and her thighs with a certain kind of force. It whirls the thin fabric of her white cotton dress up in the air, cools her sun-kissed skin in an instant. Silent whispers fill the sway around her and goosebumps rise. She breathes in, deeper,  _deeper_  until the air leaves a burning sensation in her lungs, a painful tingle that catches in the back of her throat, mingles with a bitter copper taste that lingers behind her perfect white teeth and sticks under her tongue.

_(remember)_

A loud shot, then a ripping pain in her abdomen, a rupture between her ribs, and she tries to catch another breath of air, gasps and rattles while her fingers find their way to her stomach by default. She presses them on the moistened fabric and when she casts her eyes down, she can see different shades of crimson and maroon clinging between the wrinkles and creases of her skin - a thick succulent fluid that spreads on the white virgin cotton of her floating dress, drenches its threads until they're rusty and carmine.

 _What a strange end,_  she thinks and blinks several times with her eyes fixed on thick, steel-coloured clouds that bar any glimpse at the bright glaucous horizon before she loses conscience. Her body collapses and the grass beds her with the softness of a mother's kiss while the wind still whispers softly in her ear.

_(remember you're dreaming)_

* * *

**memory**

She hides half of her face behind a black bandana that covers her nose and mouth and blends in with her obsidian hoody seamlessly. The thick mess of curls is stuck under a dark beanie while single strands fall into her face. She needs to push them back, tug them under the cap or behind her ear to keep her vision clean.

A modified sonic shotgun lies in arm's length on the desk right before her and she observes with prodigious precision the way the man's eyes flicker from her frame to Draco and back again. Time rushes by while the mechanical ticking of a nearby digital clock stretches the moment on and on and she wishes she could read the thoughts of the old man. He taps his fingers in a melodic rhythm against a yellowed newspaper on top of his desk and the headline picture shows a beautiful girl with wild locks and bright eyes and the words  _'Kidnapped by Phoenix Rebels'_  on top - she looks pointedly away.

"Why are you here Mrs Ri-"

"Granger", she interrupts him harsh but he doesn't seem to mind it because he continues unaffected.

"Granger. Certainly, you don't want to hide from your husband?", the old man's voice is gravelly, at the same time warm and comforting. She wants to trust him, wants to trust him so fucking much that she needs a second to remind herself that he's one of the problems here.

Her tongue flickers over the sensitive flesh of her underlip. "The truth. I want to fight for the truth."

"Truth is not measured in mass appeal." His tone borders to amusement, almost as if he's mocking her.

The blood rushes through her veins, spreads in her cheeks until they're flushed pinkish red against her otherwise pale skin. "Truth is the only thing worth fighting for,  _sir._ "

Silence spreads over the room again like a shroud and she feels Draco's tension radiating off his body in thick, dark waves. She doesn't need to cast a glance to see the muscles in his neck contract or the way his shoulders raise just the tiniest bit.

Dumbledore finally sighs and he looks exhausted, almost defeated. When he finds his voice again it's a broken, almost painful sound in her ears. "You should fight for the people Ms Granger. The people and the world."

"The world's not safe anymore."

He doesn't object.

* * *

**identity protocol  
** **subject: 0919  
** **insert: 0095**

Emerald gemstones are embedded in the silver badge that represents the presidential status of the capital. It fits him perfectly, almost as if it has been forged for him alone. Warm rays of sunlight catch in the gems and glisten in different kinds of green shades - apple, lime, avocado.

She watches from afar, counts forty-eight fleur-de-lys on a long burgundy carpet while Draco holds the position right to her side, his uniform tailored and decorated with a couple of medals.

They're the only two inside of the throne room except the cardinal and Tom.

They don't talk.

They don't even look at each other.

Both their eyes are frozen solid on the man in front of them.

The ceremony is strenuous and she notices how her concentration slips away from time to time again while Tom's fluent honey-dripping voice fills the halls, cites the laws of the country. When it finally ends he approaches her with brisk steps, clasping his hands around her delicate face and pushes his fingers in the hollow under her jaws.

His fingertips burn holes in her skin and she welcomes his mouth with her own, presses her dry skin against his perfect dainty lips. There's a little flash of pain when he bites down on the soft cushion of her underlip but it vanishes as fast as it flares. "We'll conquer the world, Hermione."

She bristles while her fingers catch the rough fabric of his collar between thumb and index; she rubs it absently while she answers, "The world is not safe anymore."

Stray sunbeams blind her for a second and his voice sounds far away when he murmurs, almost breathes, "It will be again."

She looks up to the sky, her hand shielding her from the blinding light and there's an alien glint in the heavens, a cyan flicker that's gone a second later.

She almost believes him.

_(subject:0919 recovery …. 12%)_

* * *

**ooo**

* * *

**anomaly**

She remembers her professor's words as clear, as the day he spoke them.

"A riot is nothing more, then the language of hooligans."

Now, Hermione watches the city floating atop like a ghost, like an entity, not really existent. Rumbling red clouds of smoke and ash rise against the sky, the firing ball of sun dips the horizon in crimson dawn; almost like blood.

People try and flee their houses - others smash furniture on the walls of soldiers. Gunfire. Bombs. Screams and screeches fill the air, thin with an audible waft of burning flesh.

People cry. People die.

 _No,_  she thinks and floats through the air, soft as a breeze.  _A riot is the language of the unheard._

Under her eyes, the city burns.

* * *

**memory.**

Her black leather pants are sharp and skinny, the leather jacket on top, cut with white spiky letters that grace the cold surface between her shoulder blades; it reads FREEDOM.

"We're not slaves! We're united! We're one!" Her voice rasps with every breath, wound and overused from the screaming between the people.

She's standing atop an overthrown wastebin, feet steady on the plate. There's no weapon around her waist, no knife in her boots. She doesn't need them. Her weapon is her voice.

Draco's at her side; the thatch of blond hair is unmistakable under the dark bandana he wears, that leaves just enough space for his eyes to gleam over the black fabric. He's the one with the gun, shielding her from the masses of black points that are fastly approaching from their lines. People are all around them, building a steady circle with high plastic shields and old-washed clothes as uniforms. All of them wear the symbol of the Order. Red like the Sun.

Black dots turn into people and people turn into soldiers until they're looming in front of them with their black shining boots and their bulletproof vests and helmets. Gas masks - as she knows - in shape of reflecting, glassy skulls. Death Eaters. The President's guards.

 _No_ , she thinks and presses her lips into a thin line until they're colourless and ashen.  _His soldiers._

"Lay your guns down," a dead voice grumbles between his teeth; it's a horribly distorted sound behind the black metal of the mask.

_Rabastan._

"We will not flinch. We will not kneel!" She's screaming again. Her eyes are on fire, the lost lives of a thousand people pumping like gasoline in her veins. She can't give up now. They can't.

The Order stands in unison. Their screams fill the ruins of the place.

"Freedom!"

The guard's helmet turns towards her and even though she can't see his eyes behind the black visor -  _green, they are green_  - she can feel the intense stare out of the cold orbs resting on her frame. Sensing her. Feeling it.

When he speaks, it's nothing more than cold spite.

"What do you think you can do against us? We are more, we are faster,  _we are_. The Lord is the Power!"

The soldiers behind him scream even louder, drowning every protest from the rebels.

"The Power is the Lord!"

Their guns pointed right at their chests. Right at their hearts. There's no other way than to fight.

Hermione grits her teeth and bites at the inside of her cheek to refrain from screaming. Her voice is sharp, cold and thin like flinders.

"Don't make war sound like an exciting game."

She wishes her words could cut through the thick fabric of his uniform.

Rabastan doesn't answer.

Behind the visor of his dark helmet, something white and poignant glimmers in the aftersun; a sharp, perfect row of teeth. He gives the signal and the troops are storming forward on both sides.

Hermione realizes he never looked more alive.

* * *

**identity protocol  
** **subject: 0919  
** **insert: 0112**

She wears a floating, silken dress that stands in stark white contrast to her rosy skin; the strange neon cyan on the sky reflects on it and breaks in a hundred different shades of blue. Her hair is tamed for once and in a complicated looking bun atop her head. Little white pearls are dangling lazily from her ears.

"These are the Death Eaters. The Royal Guard."

Tom's voice makes her turn her head around until she faces him completely.

"Who will they guard? Us?"

Her voice is wary as if she's testing the waters with him. The president's badge glimmers falsely turquoise with each step.

"Of course."

The black army spreads before them like a sea, little black, shining dots from their helmets - eyes of a monster, harsh and cold and unyielding.

Tom gives a speech and Hermione watches Draco's face; he sighs heavily, more annoyed than anything. When he leans down towards her, she can smell the taste of war on his collar. Blood and Death. "Just some sabre rattling to keep the masses happy. The people love nothing more than a leader promising victory."

"Victory?", she asks, eyes sceptical.

But Draco only nods and nothing more.

The masses of black masks -  _soldiers_  - glance up to Tom.

They love him.  
They adore him.  
They drink every single word of his lips.

_This is for broadcast. Thousands, millions, will see this.  
_ _Lies Lies Lies._

"Don't worry," Draco says and his breath tingles in her ear, "We just have to stand and look stern. Smile, wave - play along, Hermione."

She bristles.

"Don't make war sound like an exciting game," she snaps and rips her arm out of his grasp.

The sky flickers horrible cyan for a second. Then, as if it was nothing more than her own imagination, it's gone again.

When Tom turns around the sun behind him blinds him; all she can see is a hazy bright shadow against the blinding force of a giant white star.

_(subject:0919 recovery …. 19%)_

* * *

**ooo**

* * *

**anomaly**

"Did you know him?"

A million memories that flash brightly through her mind - touch her in places that should never be touched again. She's aware of the horizon before her that begins to bleed red.

"I used to." She answers; the words on her tongue bitter beyond belief. The faces around her die in the dark.

* * *

**memory**

The city lies in ruins; crumbles of stone and metal. Strong bushes of weed break through the concrete and climb the old stony walls up to the sky like vines. Windows are merely broken shards of glass that tower sharp and with blinking edges on half-bombed facades. A fine sheet of dust lies over the old city. it is deathly quiet, as no city should be. Not even the voices of children break the silence, and overhead, the sky darkens from the waning afternoon light; black clouds gather, hovering over the trees like a thick blanket. A land of ash and decay.

"I think we got them all."

Draco's voice sounds muffled and strange as if all the pain they've seen today casts a shadow over them.

Hermione hums in agreement and pushes a couple of bandages in an old brown shoulder bag that lies on a nearby table - she patches the little girl in front of her up with some iodine, and takes an old, wrapped lollipop out of her bag; the girl takes it and her face breaks into a smile that could light up the world. Carefully Hermione places her down on the dusty floor and watches how she approaches her waiting brother on the other side of the room. They leave the makeshift sickbay the Order build with an old tent in the centre of the ruins; Hermione and Draco stay silently behind.

"War will always leave orphans." Draco strips the beds and throws their sheets on a big pile in the middle of the room; they're stained and greasy, some of them even rust-coloured from dried blood. One of their soldiers lost an eye - one of them an ear. But as long as they could fire the guns, everything was alright. They could still fight.

"War will always kill the innocents. In one way or another, they will bleed"- he lowers his voice, now so close to her, she can see the tiny flecks of steel in his eyes - "We should start to confront them with reality. Dreams will lead to death and nothing more."

"Dreams are the only weapon in the war against reality." Hermione murmurs and brushes the dirt of her face away with one of her hands. Draco rests silently.

Outside of the mobile hospital, a bunch of rebels loiter around, arms in bandages and stained triangular scarves, blood stains on their clothes - cuts and bruises on every patch of skin visible. Some stand ankle-deep in dust and ruins; they all look the same. Fading hair, worn clothes, blotchy-skinned, tired, hungry - and angry. She can feel their anger. No one looks. No one smiles.

On an old garage gate that beards the turmoils of the war and towers almost out of dust and pebbles, wet white paint reads in capital letters:

**NATION OF SHEEP**

**RULED BY WOLVES**

**OWNED BY PIGS**

_This is how the fire starts,_  Hermione thinks and breathes deep in, lets the slum linger in her lungs. Her eyes are on fire.  _This is how we burn._

* * *

**identity protocol  
** **subject: 0919  
** **insert: 0118**

The national military hospital in the Capitol towers at the far east of the city as a massive pile of steel and glass. The walls are pure mirrors that reflect the warm, shining sun. There are patrols on the walls and stairs but their uniforms are not the usual black in black Tom's Death Eaters wear - they are lighter, grey and green, sometimes black pants and the shiny silver metal of guns.

Hermione realizes fast enough, that the hospital was built to endure war. Not peace.

Tom's hand is heavy and cold in her own and she clutches at the little support it gives her while they pass a couple of open doors - amputees, disfigured and blood-soaked victims string together one after one.

"Victims of the rebels," Tom murmurs and his voice brushes her cheek in a warm spearmint-covered breath that raises the little hairs on her nape. "The Order did this."

Hermione nods stiffly. Her heart swells in the moment of clarity as if the anger rises something spiteful and hateful in her. It just feels  _wrong._ The lump of muscles between her ribs hammers against her skin; it's hard to breathe around the pressing smell of Tom's rich and musky aftershave.

A little girl leaves one of the doors, a bandage and a red shining lollipop in her hand; little fingers are clasped firmly around an older's hand- probably her brother. Tom's hand around hers, tenses up.

"Her parents died in the bombings last night."

He watches her out of curious grey eyes. She blinks.

"She still has dreams," she hears herself say, and suddenly her voice grows stronger, harder, more determined.

"Dreams will not win this war, Hermione."

"No. But dreams are the only weapon in the war against reality."

Tom scoffs and hurries her along the way. Hermione turns around to take a last look at the little girl and how her small figure gets smaller and smaller.

There's a shining, bright light through the large window-walls that blinds her for a second - it refracts in a strange kaleidoscope of different shades of blue before it flickers cyan. Hermione needs to shield her eyes, but the alien flicker dies as soon as she spots it.

 _How strange,_  she thinks and rips her gaze away before she hurries after her husband.

_(subject:0919 recovery …. 27%)_


	81. Sirius

Loneliness was bitter.

Regulus used to say it all the time. Sirius didn't know when he started to understand what he meant, but nowadays he wondered if he had known all along. Loneliness was indeed a bitter beast.

The bottle swayed slowly between his slippery fingers, one side to the other. Moonlight broke off the glass surface and cast a sliver of something beautiful on the cold marble. Sirius sat with his back against the gravestone, crossed-legged with ripped jeans and bare feet that shivered from the cold. The bottle shone like the pale surface of a river in the middle of nowhere.

"To you," he murmured into the night, not sure if anyone could hear him. He doubted it. The sound carried like the wind through the dark.

He didn't even know what he did anymore. Vodka burned his throat but Regulus' name hurt his heart. Sometimes, he touched things his brother used to touch just to look for echoes of his presence. He fell apart, slowly.

Sirius fell asleep somewhere after midnight.

He woke with his nose buried in a dreadfully expensive coat that was draped over his sleeping body. The fabric was soft and exquisite and reeked of aftershave that he knew all too well. It was tailored and two golden letters were sewed into the satin inside:  _O.B._

He burned the coat in front of the grave and left the ashes to spill into the wind.


	82. Ginny x Tom - 6

Ginny is a ghost. She's a weapon and a spider and a dozen other things if she needs to. She can break bones and bruise knuckles but mostly - most importantly - she's silent. No one hears her enter, no one sees her in the shadows. 37 days of training made her cold and deadly like steel but Tom has other plans.

Tom sends her to spy on corrupt politicians.  
Tom sends her to get a couple of files.  
Tom talks to her like she's important.  
 _Tom Tom Tom Tom Tom._

Tom listens like she's vital and necessary and Ginny  _wants._  She wants so much it hurts. She goes anywhere Tom wants her. She doesn't talk if he doesn't want her to. She doesn't breath without him. She kills when he says so. She dies when he says so.

She wonders if he knows how dangerous she really is.


	83. Tom x Harry - 5

An army of dead stones spread over Little Hangleton's graveyard. Long forgotten names and long-lost legacies strung together side by side. Flowers are dying, the grass is a faded colour of green, some shade of olive that looks dirty and as if it hasn't seen water in ages. The sun shines unyielding on the horizon, bright and white and far too hot.

A single silhouette sits on top of one of the graves, legs bent until the soles of his shoes push against the polished marble headstone. Light reflects on the morning dew but the boy looks unfazed from the strange attempts to brighten his life. He scrapes the sole of his right shoe hard over the smooth stone and kicks against it. The name on the stone flashes each time he lifts his leg.

_Tom Riddle._

Somewhere in the distance, a raven caws a miserable song. Death calls his name.

Harry doesn't care. The scent of burned flesh clings to his nose.


	84. Antonin x Regulus

He's seventeen years old and Antonin Dolohov presses him down into the hard mattress of his own King Size bed. There's a brutish beat of some Russian rap song that drums against the walls from somewhere else in the house and a couple of other people are dancing, and laughing, and screaming far, far away.

One of Antonin's hands is clasped over Regulus' hips while he's thrusting his body inside of him - it's unlike any sensation Regulus ever felt, numbing and liberating until he feels his own climax rush through him. But Regulus can't concentrate because suddenly Antonin's other hand creeps up to Regulus' neck and wriggles around his throat in a tight, deadly embrace.

"Is that what you want? To come undone with my hands around your throat? To be completely fucked?" Antonin moans between two breaths, adding pressure to his body to push Regulus deeper into the bedsheets.

"Yes," Regulus gasps muffled from where Antonin presses any breath out of him, throat raw and sore. Regulus' face reddens as Antonin's grip refuses to lessen - he can feel Regulus' pulse and the blood attempting to slip beneath his fingers. As Regulus grabs hold of Antonin's wrist with both hands, Antonin tightens his grip even more.

Regulus comes across his own stomach with a shuddered breath.


	85. Rabastan x Tom

Rabastan is 18 when he falls in love.

He's crawling on hands and knees in a dark, grungy back alley, pockets full of hope and despair but no money anymore because he bet everything on fucking three kings and lost it to a straight flush.

Blood drips from his upper lid - where one of Fawley's thugs hit him with rusty, silver brass knuckles just minutes before - down on his nice green shirt. Every breath hurts his lungs and side and he's panting and wheezing for his life, fingernails scratching over algae-covered stones to push himself forward; the heaving taste of bile burns like gasoline down his throat.

His father always told him each pain is a lesson and each lesson makes you stronger.

Someone kicks him in the side, sending waves of flaring pain through his body. It most certainly broke a rib. Or two. He wishes this lesson would stop.

 _This is the end,_  he thinks and he's nearly crying, half out of pain, half out of shame, when suddenly a horrible sound of splitting bones and spurting blood fills the small, murky alley. There's shouting behind him, more fighting, outcries of pain, bodies dragging away.

Rabastan pushes up on his elbows to turn around, the pain breaking cold sweat over his damp forehead. One of the thugs has an arm around the other one and is half carrying him out of the alley while the other limps badly, leaving a dark trace of blood over the greenish stones.

There's another boy standing next to him and Rabastan doesn't even have to look twice to recognize the man. Rumours travel fast in Wizarding London and if the red shimmer in the eyes and the ring around his finger wouldn't already give it away, the sharp-like grin would do the job.

Tom Riddle.

Riddle looks at him and Rabastan keeps his eyes on the handsome face. The truth is if killing changes the colour of a man's blood, Riddle's is a darker shade than most.

Riddle looks at him hard and long with granite eyes and Rabastan feels naked in front of him as if his bones laid bare.

"I have a proposition for you," Riddle suddenly says and reaches his hand out for Rabastan to hold onto.

"I'll listen."

Rabastan is 18 the moment Tom Riddle smiles - teeth bared and polished white in the night, grin crooked and hungry - and he falls in love.


	86. Harry x Pansy

They never kiss.

Kissing is for people who haven't faith hanging around their neck like a thick old fisher-rope, or people dreaming about the end of the world. Kissing is for boyfriends and girlfriends, for husbands and wives, for people trying to save the world and not the ones determined to burn it down.

Kissing is not for the people with hollow holes inside their chests and vodka-blurred eyes.

Kissing is not for them.

She's sitting cross-legged on some cheap King Size bed with dirty sheets, in a motel outside of Birmingham, wearing nothing more than her pristine virgin-cotton underwear and Harry's thin, white muscle shirt that reeks of sweat and dust and death around the frayed collar. The heavy cloud of after-sex and steamy lust hangs intensely in the air around them, clings to their pores and tickles in the inside of her nostrils. It's not an unpleasant scent but strikingly pungent for anyone else who enters the room.

Pansy kinda likes it.

Harry sits at the end of the bed, legs on the floor, elbows on the knees and naked torso bent over. She sees a clunky flash of silver studding his tongue as he licks his lips; the roof of her mouth still tastes like the cheap vodka that came in electric blue plastic bottles. Pansy leans forward until her chin rests on top of Harry's edged shoulder, piercing bones sticking out of the skin and he grunts and heaves it to push her off, but she rests adamantine on the same place. He throws his head around for a sideways glance, watches her with an arrogant arch of his brow before he nudges his forehead hard against hers - it leaves a cracking sound in the room but the pain is dulled from the weed and the alcohol in her system. She doesn't care about it. The muscles in her abdomen are vibrating.

"What do you want?" Harry says, warm breath gracing Pansy's heathen cheeks.

"Maybe we should get Thai," she suggests.

He turns around, swift motions and hard grips, and suddenly Pansy lies under him. Her spine hits the mattress hard - she feels her vertebras crack against each other.

"Maybe I can give you something else?" He pushes her legs apart until she can see his neatly manicured line of dark, wiry hair trailing beneath his navel. Pansy wants to lick it.

"Maybe," she says and licks her lips with deliberate strokes. Harry attacks her neck.

Kissing is not for them.


	87. Sirius & Antonin

Sirius Black is always angry.

It's a well-worn fact he keeps between the hollows of his teeth, a hungry truth he doesn't dare to speak out loud because he's the oldest now. He's brother to a hopeless idiot and he does his best to keep his mouth shut and Regulus out of trouble.

Go to church, pray for your sins, live the dream.

Sirius is not a boy anymore.

He's a man and he takes responsibility to keep his baby brother safe, bruised knuckles and bloody lips all inclusive. So he swallows the venom, chokes on the wrath.

Antonin Dolohov is everything Sirius calls a threat.

"Stay away from my brother," he hisses over the obnoxious loudness of Dolohov's car speakers that roar some Russian rap. It's already night outside, the temperature is low and the wind is unyielding like fresh frost. The windows of his car are rolled down and when he speaks little clouds of white fume leave his lips.

Antonin throws his head to one side and looks like a strange animal, too many bones and teeth that glimmer from his orange dashboard. Sirius' fingers tighten over the leather-covered wheel.

"Not your problem Black"- and he says Black like something dirty, something terrible that waits in the dark to be unleashed-"what your brother is getting into, you know."

Sirius knows. He keeps silent. The light above them turns green; neither one drives.

"You know," Antonin drawls as soon as the red light flashes above them again, "Something inside of you demands to be felt." Antonin pushes his shoulder blades out, enough to make a crackling, bloodcurdling sound. Sirius' blood pumps wilder. "Something inside of you hurts, That's why you need this-", his hand flaps around as if to point to the void between them, "-your brother needs alcohol to numb his fucking brain. What about you, president boy? What do you need?"

The light above them turns green. Sirius speeds away, leaving traces of rubber on the street. He doesn't close the windows until he gets home.


	88. Sirius x Remus - 2

Sirius presses his face to Remus' neck and the other one laughs, haunted and hollow like a wounded sound, a terrifying cackle like a shot animal. He's high or perhaps they are both. High on hope, high on life itself.

Remus' shirt is bathed in the stench of weed and old grass with the hint of sweat.

Sirius wonders what it would be like to taste the other boy, to lick at the sweat pooling in the hollow of his throat. What if Remus turns his head just ever so slightly? What if he'd kiss him?

Sirius has always been a collection of half-strung  _what if's_. Nothing concrete. Nothing definitive.

The shallow breath of weed and grass brushes Sirius' nose.

He turns around and buries his head in a nearby pillow.


	89. Tom x Harry - 6

"I can kill you."

"No, you can't." Tom puffs a perfect circle of white smoke between his lips. The weed reeks sweet and unnatural, almost metallic - it tastes even worse, but it comes with the desired effect because his head feels light and floating, almost unattached. May be the dream though.

Harry clenches his teeth and works his jaw in a way so that Tom can watch the vein in his throat. It tenses and pumps and looks horrible alive and not out of a dream at all. He looks like a predator, right before the attack.

"Yes, I can."

"How would you kill me then," Tom says smugly but his eyes rest on the patch of blue-illuminated skin of Harry's collarbone. "Describe the process."

Harry swallows. His thin lips flatten into a taut white line that shatters any doubt between them. Suddenly, everything feels so anticlimactic and plain - raw emotions spilt between dust and dreams, blurs of wasted potential.

Harry Potter will never kill Tom Riddle.

The truth dawns in Harry's eyes but he wakes simultaneously as Tom laughs.


	90. Ginny x Tom - 7

"Do you love him?"

Voice soft, a whisper carried by the wind, a breeze and nothing more. Luna stares at her from the other side of the room. Ginny would never admit something out loud like this; never.

She bites down on the soft cushion of her underlip until she draws blood. Suddenly everything's too much, too blurry, too whimsical. Dead faces unmoved and hazy, a mouth here, eyes there - human somewhere in between. Blood on her hands, blood on the walls. A landscape of regret and hate that fills the endless void, dim and tipsy from hopes and dreams. A million memories that flash brightly through her mind - touch her. She's tired and her eyes are heavy, her mouth dry and rasping.

"I used to." She answers finally; the words on her tongue bitter beyond belief. The food in front of her is cold and untouched. The faces around her die in the dark.


	91. Draco x Harry - 6

Blaise hears them before he sees it.

It's in the middle of the night, the sky a cold but bleak vast of black space without clouds or the occasional red lights of stray planes. He wants to take a piss but the bathroom door is already wide open and spills warm, yellowish light in the sparsely lit hallway; it reflects on one of the mirrors Pansy insisted they'd hang up so she could apply his eyeliner each morning.

"Don't bleed on the floor." Draco's voice says, muffled from the night and Potter grunts something in response. He sounds fatigue.

Blaise stops outside the room, halfway hidden from the night and he watches, amazed, how Draco winds white bandages around Potter's wrists and arms. Potter's forehead lies still against Draco's shoulder and he breathes, soft and shallow. The smeared blood that drips from his fingers is a biting contrast to his bronze skin; Draco rubs it carefully away and throws the drenched cotton balls down on the floor.

Then, oblivious to their spectator, Draco tilts Potter's head backwards and kisses his lips once. Hard. Demanding. Commanding.

Blaise feels like a thief of the moment. He turns around and goes back to his bed.


	92. Sirius x Pansy

Sirius is driving. He always is.

He calls her babydoll more often than not. Pansy doubts he knows her real name. She's used being labelled and named, floating from one name to the other. Nothing that will be able to know the half-worn truths and lies she keeps clumsily tugged under her nails.

"Do you trust me?" Sirius asks half across the highway with nothing more than desert as far as the eye can reach. Pansy considers her answer, flicks her tongue against her gums and blows a bright pink strawberry gum bubble until it bursts. Her feet are pushed upon the dashboard which rides up her dark green cotton skirt - Sirius doesn't even look at her bare thighs. She snorts.

"No."

"Smart girl," his smile is razor-sharp and lethal.

Something inside of her feels alive. What a dangerous feeling.


	93. Antonin x Regulus - 2

The pill feels strange on his tongue, like a sleek intruder, a blasphemous little beast that reminds him that he's not as perfect as he wants, his edges not as clean and polished as people think. He's on the verge of spitting the pill out again when Antonin elbows him right in the pit of his stomach. Regulus doubles over, hands bracing the fall - he swallows, out of reflex. The pill crawls down his throat, dry.

"Breathe," Antonin drawls at his side, lips hovering over Regulus' right ear. Dirt and grease smear under Regulus' fingertips. He tries to stand up but his head feels heavy, dizzy, his eyes are blurred and start to itch like fire.

"There lies a massacre ahead of you. Don't try to fight it too much. Embrace the beauty of it."

Antonin's voice sounds like a far away dream by now - like an old echo of a song long forgotten. Regulus' arms give up under his weight and he falls cheek first down on the cold tiles of Antonin's kitchen floor.  _What did I want? Why am I here?_

There's a hand in his hair, half-strung voices in the background that sound lost in the void.

"I think I could love you-", someone says but he thinks  _no, must be imagination_  just before his conscious drifts away.


	94. Tom x Harry - 7

"We make each other alive, Harry."

There's the cold slice of a knife on his abdomen that slithers over his skin like a snake. Goosebumps raise on his spine. Tom laughs, hollow and haunted, the sound strangely distorted in the blurs of the limbo.

"Don't give me that face. In truth you like the pain, don't you?" Tom's eyes are clear and dark in the night. Cobras right before the kill. When he leans down to murmur against Harry's mouth, he can taste the lingering flavour of death on Tom's lips.

The blade draws blood.

"You like it because you think you deserve it."


	95. Antonin x Sirius

Antonin bites him. No, bite is not the right word. He  _mauls_  Sirius. Teeth and lips and fucking fingernails claw their way all over him.

Antonin moves rapidly, his hand sliding up from Sirius' neck to fist his hair and he slams Sirius' head back, cracking sharply against the old brick wall of Hogwarts. Sirius groans, his vision flickering. He can taste Antonin like a copper old coin on his tongue, something invasive and biting, drenched with the scent of dirt, leather and faintly gasoline. Sirius' lip splits.

"Fucking-"

"It's blood, not nuclear waste," Antonin says and licks a hot, wet path from Sirius' chin up to his lips. "Chill out, president boy."

Sirius lunges and clashes their teeth together.


	96. Tom x Harry - 8

"Voldemort tries to get into your head," dream-Ron says. It has to be dream-Ron because this Ron is drunk and worried and sits in the passenger seat of the old Ford and the real Ron would never let Harry drive again. Harry roars the engine up - dream-Ron says nothing.

"Riddle," Ronan snarls the vowels each one sharp and short, "won't get in. I won't let him."

_Riddle, always Riddle. Not Voldemort._

Ron beside him sighs, deep and long drawn but his eyes watch out the window, unfocused. When he speaks, his voice sounds far away, like a dream in a dream.

"He already is."


	97. Regulus x Rabastan

Rabastan's fingers dig into the soft flesh of Regulus' throat, a lethal threat tight with something sentimental, something that urges and presses and can't surrender. He presses his thumb against Regulus' Adam's apple until breathing gets harder.

"You see what you do to me, Black?"

Rabastan whispers, eyes on fire, bright and daring against the endless void. Everything is dark, his features almost invisible in the dim Prussian blue of the night. He leans down and Regulus lies perfectly still, not even a muscle twitches. Rabastan's lips are dry on his ear.

"You bring out the beast in me."


	98. Regulus x Tom - 2

"Life gives you nothing," Tom murmurs against the heathen skin of Regulus' back.

The faint trace of dry lips tickles against Regulus' shoulder-blades. Sparks and smoke rise every time Tom touches him. The smell of burned flesh clings to the inside of his nostrils, sets itself like a thick blanket on his tongue.

Tom bends forwards until his body lies flat on Regulus' back; three days stubble rasps on his neck.

"Even death needs to be earned Black."

Regulus feels like throwing up.


	99. Marcus x Oliver - 4

Oliver is late. To say Oliver is never late is a lie because, yes, occasionally he's late to class but never to Latin. That's partly the fault of Percy who shares the class with him and actually wants to be on time, and partly his own because he likes Latin. But Oliver has checked the latest Quidditch results so Percy went ahead and has probably been on time, while Oliver enters the class 4 minutes late with his backpack swinging furiously on his edged shoulder.

Quirrell, a strange creature with long limbs and a voice that tries for authority but ends in blank frustration, barks at him and sends Oliver at his desk. Oliver snorts, but he doesn't move. Every muscle and fibre of his body fails him. Because in the usually empty place behind him, sits Marcus Flint like a king on his throne, long limbs stretched out, feet casually thrown over each other under Oliver's chair.

Oliver clenches his fist around the strap of his backpack. It's a grounding tactic to swallow the anger. Rule number one, don't ever show weakness. Be emotionless.

Flint's grin goes sharp.

"Mr Wood? Is there a problem?"

Oliver doesn't answer. Instead, he slumps into his chair and pulls his notebook and pen out. Percy, seated front-row left corner, throws a worried glance back at him, but Oliver shakes his head and fixates his eyes on the clock over the teacher's desk.

Forty minutes until the end of the period. Quirrell's monotonous voice fills the room again.

To Oliver's utter surprise, the first twenty minutes go surprisingly well. Quirrell hands out a couple of old Latin poems and resumes exactly where they stopped before the summer.

Halfway through, Flint's boredom catches up with him. One of their classmates - some guy called Lucion or Lucian, Oliver can't recall - is in the middle of translating one of Cicero's poems when the first ball of paper lands on Oliver's desk. It is small and rumpled, a clump of something that will never be pristine and ironed again. He ignores it.

A second ball follows right after.

And another one.

Oliver takes a deep breath.

Quirrell casts a glance at his direction but looks away, as if looking at Oliver would infect his eyes. Another ball of paper lands on his desk and rasps at his knuckles. Toying the edge of the paper with his fingers, Oliver finally gives in and folds them open one by one.

_hey fucker_

_don't ignore me_

_I just remembered last year_

_does Johnson know about New Year's Day?_

The memories hit his mind faster than Oliver can block them out:  _fast cars, blinking lights, green, red, mud on the track, hard lips, blood between his teeth, a name, his name, a kiss_  - Something roars deep inside of him. Oliver's mouth dries out.

"Do I have your attention now, princess?" Flint drawls behind him, his voice sharp but so silent Quirrell doesn't seem to notice. It's hard for Oliver to make all the words out of Flint's long-drawled muttering. There's a hint of a Scottish accent in it; long rolled vowels and sharp consonants, a slur of something seductive. It's almost as if Flint's doing it on purpose to make Oliver listen more carefully.

Oliver doesn't answer. He slumps down on his chair, mostly out of spite.

Ten minutes until the end of the period. Lucion-Lucian is still translating. Oliver needs to make sure to stay calm, just for ten more minutes. He fixes his eyes on the tanned patch of skin on Percy's neck. Soft curls at the nape, half a profile illuminated by the summer sun, the arch of his nose that looks like it has been broken before -

"Quite a view charity boy over there, huh?" Flint's voice is still not more like the buzzing of an annoying insect, but it has the desired effect. Oliver's eyes snap back down to the pencil in his hands. His whole body tenses, knuckles white around the pencil. A miracle of hard muscles and ferocious eyes. The faint traces of his shaved hair are raising. Flint has his attention.

"What a wanton mouth he has. Pity his lips seem a bit dry. But a good dick can change that, huh? Perhaps that's why people hit him - to open up his mouth wider-"

Flint's voice is a barrage of gunfire. It drains all the other noises out of Oliver's head until nothing remains except the white, blank rage that simmers deep down in his gut. The pencil between Oliver's fingers crackles with presentiment. The clock at the far end of the room taunts him. Three more minutes.

"Do you think I can make him scream, princess? Is he a screamer?" His voice is close by now, warm breath in the back of Oliver's nape. Perhaps it is sheer imagination; Oliver doesn't know anymore. The anger has control over him by now. It fills his veins with venom so pure he can feel his heart beat faster. Each beat the blow of a war drum.

Quirrell is still in the front reciting futile poems of dead people and giving them homework. Inside Oliver's head, there is only rage. Just two more minutes.

"I guess I'll find out tonight. Make his mouth wide and open for me. Oh, wait. He can't really scream with a cock in his m-" Everything else is swallowed by the scratching sound of Oliver's chair and the heavy interjection of gasping breathes; he swirls around in a swift, animalistic way and lunges over the desk to grab at Flint's white cotton tee. Curling his hands around the fabric, he rips hard with one hand to bring the boy closer while the other already clenches in a tool of destruction. With a single, adamantine blow, he punches Flint right in the face.

People are screaming his name. Lucion-Lucian perhaps, Percy, definitely Quirrell. Oliver crouches down immediately afterwards and tears at the soft, black hair with more force than necessary. "Don't you ever dare to fucking touch him or I'll swear to god-" Two boys pull him off. Someone grabs his biceps to keep him from throwing another punch. Oliver snarls in their face. Quirrell screeches Oliver's name and something that sounds like the word detention right beside his ear.

He doesn't care.

Flint's eyes are wild. His lips carefully spread into a grin that says  _with this smile I can get away with everything_.

Oliver's knuckles are burning with the sensation of the impact. His father has taught him how to fight. How to make it worth it.

Slowly, a trickle of blood runs from Flint's nose.

Oliver has never felt more  _alive._


	100. Tom x Hermione - 12

_He had it coming, he had it coming  
_ _He took a flower in its prime  
_ _And then he used it and he abused it  
_ _It was a murder but not a crime_  
**Cell Block Tango**

* * *

The day his masquerade collapses -  
no.  
Alright.  
Back to the Beginning.

It's his second week on campus when Tom meets her.

She has both feet on a chair and tries to reach the top shelf for a copy of Plato's  _The Republic._  The dress is a gaudy sky blue with a little bow around the waist. It stops right before her knees.

From his spot on the ground he can see her underwear - white lace lingerie with semi-transparent material that covers her ass - he admits it's a fine ass with rosy round cheeks, and if he stares a bit longer than socially acceptable, well it's utterly unintended.

"I thought they'd have finally banned peepers from the library?", the girl says at one point and Tom is not entirely sure how long he has stared at these bare, long legs.

"There was no sign at the entrance."

"Huh." She climbs down the chair - Plato's  _The Republic_ pressed between arm and chest - and dusts the cover off with a finely manicured hand. Her nails are short but trim with a white french at the top. Of course.

"I'd suggest not to try this again if you don't want me to report you."

"I'd suggest trying a thong if you want to get laid."

Her face drops from casual to outrageous faster than a Ferrari F12berlinetta on a no limit highway.

Well, what a start, Tom thinks.

* * *

The thing about Tom Riddle is, is that he's brilliant and utterly Machiavellian to the point, that it nearly graces megalomania. Straight A student with the best recommendations anyone can hope for. Advanced subjects in maths, chemistry, biology, speaks seven languages fluently and worked voluntarily for a couple of law firms during the summer. Tom had to learn the hard way, that sometimes connections and money can cost you your scholarship.

The thing about Tom Riddle is, is that he didn't give up when the letter arrived in his mailbox telling him they chose another one for the scholarship -  _an athlete of all things_ \- but that he'd be still be welcomed if he could afford the monthly taxes. He needed money. He needed it fast.

It's not hard to sell your body if you already sold your soul.

The thing about Tom Riddle is, as anyone can certainly confirm, is that boys and girls love him alike. He's charming, he's easy, he's deceiving and most importantly he's in control.

The thing about Tom Riddle is, is that he has a reputation. Tom knows how to play his game. He wears tight dark designer jeans, sometimes ripped at the knees, and a black, scuffed leather jacket over simple v-neck shirts which expose a part of a collarbone tattoo. Girls want the bad-boy look with a flash of danger swinging in his attitude while the boys are happy enough to call him his bro or dude and invite him to so-called underground parties. Tom is keen to give them whatever they need.

The thing about Tom Riddle is, he wears a mask. Well-crafted, hand-drawn and spectacularly woven out of fifty percent lies and fifty percent hard work. He's certainly not ready to drop it so easily.

* * *

"You still use Internet Explorer? You must like it  _nice and slow._ " Tom puts his original French copy of  _Les Misérables_ on the table and slumps down on the chair across from Hermione. He leers at her and shows a row of perfect white teeth in the process.

"I don't think you can handle me on Chrome mode." Her hands stop over the keyboard of her silver Macbook and she turns around to fix him with an amused glimmer; a spark of something mischievous in her caramel brown eyes. The stare is unnerving. Tom's grin cracks.

"I'm Tom," he informs her casually and opens the book where his bookmark rests; somewhere between Marius' hopeless love and Enjolras fight for Patria.

"I know," she answers and turns back to her laptop. The grin on her lips stays.

* * *

Hermione Granger is a good girl.

She wears knee-length petticoat dresses, and skirts with simple white Yves Saint Laurent polo shirts. She completes her outfits with cotton cardigans in the whole colour spectrum of the rainbow.

She keeps her nails trimmed and plain, mostly french manicured- sometimes she uses a ridiculous rosy Essie nail polish that Luna bought her, called pink-a-boo.

She takes a stand for minor races and founded a club that fights for the rights of LGBTQ students in College.

She calls her parents three times a week and allows Cedric Diggory to court her to her locker and kiss her goodbye on the cheek.

She never drinks alcohol.

She doesn't do drugs.

And she most certainly doesn't indulge in these ridiculous frat rituals of the Beauxbaton all-girls-frat house.

Hermione Granger is a good girl.

It's merely a matter of time before Tom Riddle will ruin that.

* * *

**Ginny**

so I heard you have a stalker now

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.  
How's your own personal stalker? Still creepy as always?

that's what ferrets do  
creeping around

Your hate is admirable.

I don't exactly hate him hermione  
but if he would be on fire and I had a bottle of water  
I'd drink it

* * *

Tom Riddle is five years old when he understands, that he's living in an orphanage because his father doesn't want him.

Tom Riddle is nine years old when he understands, that life will always be in favour of those who have the money on their side.

Tom Riddle is twelve when he decides he won't let anyone come in his way.

Tom Riddle is nineteen when he experiences, how Cedric Diggory gets the scholarship that was promised to Tom from the start.

Cedric Diggory, as some girls claim, has golden hair that glitters in the sun.

In general, they claim the boy glitters in sunlight- period.

Cedric Diggory is star quarterback of the Hufflepuff Badgers and throws a Spiral at 50m/h. This may feel like an accomplishment for some, but Tom is inclined to compare it to professional baseball players who can throw a ball at 120m/h if needed. Bad prospects for Diggory it seems.

Tom has general doubts about anyone as soon as people start to idealize them and give them ranks in something as utter hormone driven as College.

If being Cedric Diggory is the Status Quo, Tom needs to make sure to ruin him.

He can't let anyone get away with stealing his scholarship.

He has a reputation to lose after all.

* * *

The internet is a black hole.

It's a giant black void that absorbs information and devours it to throw it back up - sometimes in pieces, sometimes more than you asked for. It's a conundrum of loops and dirty passages that allows you to find anything you need, anytime you want.

Tom learned early enough, that the internet is money.

Every piece of information, every little fraction of data input is pure cash that he can transport to his bank account.

Every day he dances on the fine line between illegal and legally grey.

He controls it.

He  _masters_  it.

The internet is a black hole.

And the Horcrux portal is Tom's playground.

* * *

They're in the middle of a hardcore bukkake shot between Bellatrix and the Lestrange twins when Tom's mobile vibrates with a new text message.

"Important?" Abraxas looks up from his spot hunched behind the video camera.

Tom tries his best to ignore him as well as Bellatrix' fake moaning in the background. He takes the phone out of his jeans - always skinny, too skinny - and reads the sender.

Hermione.

Huh, he thinks and a second later his lips spread into a grin.

Dangerous. Precarious. Fatal.

They send some messages back and forth - flirting with the devil as he calls it - and it's not until one of the twins snarls in Abraxas' direction that Tom finally looks up.

"What's the problem?"

Abraxas sighs and waves his hand in the general direction of the low-class props in the background where Bella slips a hand over her white covered stomach, slips it down between her lips. It's flour and lemon juice mostly, a blend often used in the porn industry to raise the clicks. No man can spurt like a water tube in the end.

Rabastan puffs up and his erection points bold in Tom's direction.

"Fuck, no. I won't sleep with my brother. Incest is illegal - and an abomination if someone still cares."

"So is that hairdo Rabastan, but I figured that's your business." Tom cocks his head to one side and nods back to the bed, where Rodolphus still lingers half pressed against Bellatrix and half tangled in cheap Ikea bed sheets. "Incest and above all gaycest sells best in a threesome these days. You agreed to this, remember?"

Silence.

"Is there another problem Rabastan?"

Rabastan Lestrange stays silent. His face a study in anger and confusion.

Tom doesn't bother anymore but takes his phone and types an answer.

Rabastan turns around and climbs back into the bed.

* * *

Tom Riddle has a hand under her skirt and another one in her wild locks and Hermione doesn't know how it happened. One moment they are discussing Cicero's Laws and the next she claws her nails down the side of his neck while he drags his teeth over her jawbone.

He bites, he sucks, he fucking gnaws on her skin until it feels raw and throbbing. Her pulse jumps uncontrollably against her throat - it flutters and trembles and palpitates. There's a fine red burn from Tom's three-days stubble that spreads from her cheeks down to her collarbone and Hermione pushes her filigree hands under his white v-neck shirt, traces the fine muscles on his stomach.

"Stop." She breathes, hastily.

Her hands push against Tom's shoulders and she feels the cold material of his leather jacket that spreads through her palms.

"Stop," she whispers again.

He bites down on her shoulder, hard enough to leave a bruise.

"Say it thrice and I will."

She licks her lips once. And then, she kicks him in the crotch.

* * *

**Mione**

.______.  
it's a whale  
mione?

How do you even have friends Harry?

._.  
baby whale

* * *

**The King**

._____.  
it's a whale

Cool dude. Want to watch some porns tonight?

x_____x  
dead whale  
not cool ron

* * *

When Ron Weasley calls Neville Longbottom one Saturday night to ask him, to hack into because his monthly access ran out, the first thing Longbottom says is "No."

Then he adds, "Do you even know how they script their site? It's virtually impossible to hack them - they're like the Bratva of the internet."

"Come on dude," Ron urges and clacks his tongue against his teeth, takes another drag of his cigarette, "You still owe me from that one time with Lovegood."

There's a faint snarl of carefully chosen insults over the static line of the phone, before Longbottom finally relents.

"Okay, what do you want me to download?"

Ron's face splits into a grin.

Lord Voldemort's epic series is one of their best sells. Noir-esque, cheap settings with hardcore sessions. The main character, Lord Voldemort, is an immortal casanova wizard who tries to get special agent Harriett Propper to his site - Ron likes to imagine, that Voldemort is a redhead under the usual mask he wears. The series is a must-know. A classic, as Ron calls it, from the early days when was merely a simple porn site and put the movies online for 20 bucks each. Nowadays, depending on what kink you are into, even streams could cost you a fortune.

Lord Voldemort's movies, however, are a legend.

There are seven in total.

 _Lord Voldemort and the Philosopher's Moan  
_ _Lord Voldemort and the Chamber Of Semen  
_ _Lord Voldemort and the Prisoner Of Ass-To-Bang  
_ _Lord Voldemort and the Goblet Of Cum  
_ _Lord Voldemort and the Order Of The Penis  
_ _Lord Voldemort and the Half-Blood Whore  
_ _Lord Voldemort and the Deathly Swallows_

Ron Weasley wants them all.

* * *

**Mulciber**

Someone hacked the site but didn't download anything besides the LV porn series.  
Weird.

If you wouldn't have been drunk last night perhaps he would not have succeeded.

I wasn't that drunk Tom…

You asked Rosier's cat why he killed Mufasa.  
And then you almost got in a fist fight with Nott.

What? Why?

Something about him being Team Edward.

Hahaha, I didn't even read Twilight.

You showed us your ebook collection on your phone.

Oh.

* * *

Tom leans forward, across the sofa, and catches her chin in his hand. She stills. Carefully he rubs the pad of his thumb over the wet, lip-glossed cushion of her lower lip; his eyes are transfixed.

"We shouldn't do that," she whispers and her warm breath brushes over his thumb.

He hums in agreement.

"Try it," he smiles. It's calculated, dangerous, risky. He leans forward.

"Try and stop me, Hermione."

Hermione inhales and a second later Tom's lips meet hers. First, it's dry lips on wet cushions, but soon enough her tongue darts out and she tastes spearmint gum and fresh lemon juice. Something dark and rich. Tom's hand searches its way under her petticoat skirt; he pinches the warm flesh of her thighs. Her excitement reverberates through her chest, like a fierce echo. His breath hitches.

* * *

Tom watches her the next day, coloured in blue from his Ray-Ban sunglasses, hidden behind a tree and slurping on some raspberry-apple slushy.

She's sitting on the grass with a book on her lap. Her hands are fidgeting with the rings on her fingers, or the plait on her shoulder. He likes it when she keeps her hair open, wild and untamed just like her real character that blossoms under the surface.

Some girls are not meant to be tamed.

Some girls are supposed to run wild until they find someone, just as wild to run with them.

And she is more than wild.

She's lethal.

She's perilous.

Diggory jogs over and pushes his wet bangs backwards; they lie flat and sweaty on his head and Hermione wrinkles her nose in disgust when he leans over to brush a kiss on her cheek. She's not meant to be Diggory's. She never was.

Tom snorts and takes another gulp on his slushy.

* * *

**Tom**

Tell me, if we do have sex after our first date tomorrow,   
is it required that Taylor Swift is playing in the background?

What makes you even think that we will have sex?

Let's call it intuition.

How about we call it haughtiness.

Are we talking dirty to each other now?

I don't think you can handle me dirty Tom.

* * *

She hasn't thought their date would end up here of all things, with Tom on his knees and her back up against some cheap and dirty residence wall. The brickwork scratches and shoves against her shoulders.

Hermione can feel it.

Everything.

The light burn of stubble on her neck, the hard grip of his fingertips on her hipbones - hard, so hard that they nearly leave bruises -, the way he pushes his thumbs in the waistband of her skirt and tugs the cotton material of her polo shirt up. She feels the cold air on her stomach and a trail of goosebumps raises on her sides. He kneels in front of her, both knees in the dirty dust of the street and they'll be raw by morning if she doesn't- if she can't-

"Tom we need to-", but her breath hitches the moment she feels the tickle of chapped lips on her skin. He kisses the small path under her navel, bites in the flesh.

She looks down.

He is undone.

She surges forward and flees in the night.

* * *

**Horcrux Portal.**

Virtual city of illegal sites where anything and everything can be bought anonymously. People are selling their virginities, internal organs, brokering murder, their own suicides.

is just one shop in a giant shopping mall.

All the data is transferred to an untraceable port that makes it impossible to shut it down. Sub-sites and enough material to blackmail clientele from an upper paycheck are prerequisites to run the site. Snuff films, hardcore porn, voyeurism, black market, choking, incest - it's a spiderweb of raw material and Tom Riddle has it all.

"It's a fucking rabbit hole," special agent Sirius Black, London Police Department for Cyber Crimes, snarls and throws the keyboard across the table. "It's even worse than craigslist - some people sell murder and their virginity on this fucking site."

"If we can get our hands on their user records, we'll have the identities of anyone who has ever bought or sold anything on a Horcrux site." Leave it to Remus to be always the optimist.

Silence dominates the room for a second and the only sound is the horrible crackling of the old air conditioner.

"Yeah," Sirius finally snorts and pushes his keyboard back in place, "Good luck with that."

* * *

**Ginny**

Are your parents going to like Longbottom?

they should, he's a man.

Personality is not as important as the presence of a penis?

come on hermione  
he's handsome  
decent

Rich.

yes, rich

You said he's a man.  
How many women have you brought home?

just one  
still more than ron

* * *

"I want you to scream for me," Tom whispers - no, moans - when he grabs the hem of his well-worn v-neck shirt and throws it at the other end of the room; it slides over the cheap wooden panels until it stops as a plain knot of white fabric.

"No way," Hermione answers between two breaths and she bites her lips to prevent a similar moan from escaping. Eagerly she pushes her own shirt over her head and opens her bra skillfully with a single hand. Something daring flickers in her eyes. Tom watches, mesmerized. His pupils dilated.

She presses the sole of her foot against the bulge in his trousers and pushes; the zipper scratches on her sole. His skinny jeans cover just about nothing and he can't remember ever being this hard before. This desperate. His cock is practically throbbing, aching to finally have her on his knees. He thinks about shoving her to her knees and spreading her legs, tasting how wet she is, how dripping and how it would taste on his tongue, how it would stick between his teeth. He thinks about fucking down her throat until she cries and begs and moans and -

"You will scream," he says, hoarse, and flicks the wet patch of his tongue once over dry chapped lips. He grabs her skirt and pulls it down forcefully.

* * *

Hermione does scream later, Tom's hands gripping her hips to stop her bucking up into his mouth; he keeps her exactly where he wants her, pulls back whenever she gets close and she's snarling, kicking, scratches her nails over his bare shoulders. Tom bites the inside of her thighs, thumbs over her nipples, kisses the fleshy part of skin under her navel. Hermione's sobs of frustration get louder and more desperate and she breaks and begs, her voice utterly wrecked until Tom kisses his way back down again.

* * *

When Tom wakes the next morning, the peachy smell of her shampoo clings in the inside of his nostrils. It reeks chemical and far too sweet for his liking, so he turns his head around and sits up. Hermione is fresh out of the shower, a faint glint of dampness still on her skin. His eyes are transfixed on a single drop of water that runs down on her neck and vanishes in the hollow between her breasts. She flicks an electric blue elastic on her wrist and a second later she piles her hair on top of her head in some kind of messy, complicated looking knot - he wants to rip it open and bury his hands in her hair. She's ravishing. She's  _his._

"I guess Diggory can bawl his eyes out now, huh?" He stretches his arms wide over his head and catches something she throws at him in the process - his boxers.

"Why would he?" There's a glimmer in her eyes once more, something that challenges him and mocks him all the same.

"Considering you're a couple?"

The sudden grin that spreads her lips falters any movement on his own face. She laughs, sharp like flinders, high and clear. She kneels on the bed, straddles him on top of the expensive bed linen she uses. Her hands crossed behind his neck and he can feel her fingertips tickling the little strands in his nape. He shivers.

Then she leans down, and whispers in his ear.

"Cedric is gay."

He needs a moment to process her words, picks them apart carefully.

She played him.

She knew that he wanted to pinch Diggory's girlfriend from the start and she turned the tables on him.

He's outraged.

"You had this planned all along, didn't you?"

She leers at him, smirks -  _fucking smirks_ \- and scratches with her simple nails the path of raw skin between his shoulder blades. He shivers again.

"I did."

He wants to answer and push her away but she surges forward and sucks the chapped cushion of his underlip between her teeth and starts to sway her hips on his lap. He moans. His fingers trail imaginary patterns on her thighs.

"So Diggory is gay?"

 _Gay athlete, how cliché,_  Tom thinks,  _how easy to destroy him._

Hermione bites down on his lip. Her eyes are wild, daring.

"Don't even think about it. I know exactly how you make your money Riddle and don't even think for a second I wouldn't hold it against you."

He moans, again, and tosses them around to press her back in the mattress.

He's in control.

He loves control.

She licks her lips once and runs her hands over the flat of her stomach.

She's dangerous and dirty and perfect.

She's his.

He can't help himself to ask.

"What do you think of amateur porn?"

She smirks and spreads her bare legs wider.


	101. Ginny x Tom - 8

It all starts on the roof of the Slytherin fraternity house.

Well, let's go in detail. Actually it starts with Pansy Parkinson's New Eve's party when Greyback - star quarterback that looks mid-thirties and far too old to be in university anymore- crashes the party with his crew of miserable bastards, all too well trained and muscled under crisp, silver-green jerseys, and Luna - the traitor - drags Ginny into the Slytherin fraternity house just to vanish a minute later and go off to suck the life out of Marcus Flint with her lips clasped around his and smears of bright pink glitter lipstick all over Flint's five o'clock stubble.

Ginny takes her leave exactly three and a half seconds later.

She passes a ton of doors on her way, stuffed with luxurious silken lines on bedsheets and people doing rows of rainbow shots from Hannah Abbott's lean, muscled stomach. There's also the glimpse of someone drinking a bottle of ketchup and Ginny wishes and prays that it isn't Ron; she won't survive another round of  ** _Weasley is the King_**  chanting that follows her for the rest of her college years. On her way out of the house, she finds the stairs that lead her to the roof rather than the entrance. She curses and wants to turn around, but she thinks about all the sweaty, drinking people at the basement and slips out of the door like a shadow in the night.

The house is far too loud, but the roof is silent besides the faint trace of Slytherin music that beats under her feet - a strange mixture between house pop and Pentatonix songs - the worst hybrid Ginny ever heard. She almost doesn't see the figure looming in the night, the embers of his lit cigarette bright vermillion red against the dark night sky. It's cold but no wind or rain - always rain in England - dims the darkness.

"Want one?", the man asks with a dark baritone. It's almost a whisper, like something secretive but alluring. She strolls closer.

"Sure."

They share his cigarette back and forth and she wonders, briefly, if he is like her.

If he lost his humanity at the wreckage of his life until he didn't want to be human anymore. If he knew that survival on a daily battle shifts your priorities. If he, like her, feels sometimes like a cog in an over-rusted system that intents on breaking you apart at the seams so you don't notice the little things that make a meaty clump of cells actually human anymore.

But the moment breaks and the man shifts for the first time to look at her. His eyes are unnaturally grey. Bleak and cold, like the slippy surface of a frozen sea.

It all starts on the roof of the Slytherin fraternity house - with Tom Marvolo Riddle leaning against the brittle handrail, a dark grin in the corners of his mouth when he asks, "Do you want to play a game?"

* * *

It's easy at the start.

They ask the usual questions when someone chooses truth-  _have you ever been kissed? your biggest dream? your ambitions?_  and he says the word like something dirty, like something holy.

And the usual dares -  _I dare you to spit off the roof, I dare you to climb the handrail,_  and there is something dark in his gaze, something perilous that makes her heart beat faster, her breath shakier.

_Could he kill me? Would he?_

She doesn't know how long they're already playing but the swaying sound of booze impregnated sing-song reaches them on the roof and when she looks down, feet steady on the brittle handrail and hands clasped around the rusty metal, she can see Penelope Clearwater dragging her perfectly manicured nails through Michael Corner's dark hair. Something inside of her lashes hungry.

"I dare you to throw your stub on her hair."

Tom looks at her with a strange expression. Careful and guarded, a mask of something Ginny knows all too well. She sees it every time she looks in her mirror. A mask of human flesh that reminds you to play human. To play alive. Tom's grin is marvellous; all flashing, peeking white teeth. She holds his stare.

A quick glance and a flick of his wrist later the cigarette stub in Tom's hand falls down and lands on Clearwater's blue woollen hat. For a careful minute, nothing happens. Then, the slow silver shimmer of smoke starts to emerge.

Something inside of Ginny bursts. The corners of her mouth twitch.

"Truth or Dare?" Tom asks, his voice low and close to her ear. She can feel his breath sliver over her flushed, pink cheeks.

"Dare," she whispers, voice almost silent in the cold night.

A raspy sound, then he holds out his lighter before her eyes. The flame dances and throws orange spots on his long, thin hands.

His lips chap over her ear. "Your turn."

She takes the lighter in her hands.

Ginny feels awake.

No - she feels  _alive_.

* * *

She returns to her dorm with the smell of fire and smoke on her skin and it lingers on the inside of her nose, like heavy tobacco. Even the shower can't wash it off.

When she falls into the soft cushions of her bed the sun creeps up at the sky.

She thinks about Tom and his granite eyes when her hand slips into the soft, cotton fabric of her fresh underwear.

Today, Tom dug his teeth into her. First, he was careful but soon something possessed her, something she never knew would wait inside of her little, rotten body. Every truth, every dare took another bite of her.

Now, on the warm sheets of her bed, she feels raw inside. She's hurt and open and her body is in flames. She wants more. When she thinks about his eyes on her, his breath on her neck, she comes with a startled cry.

When they meet again, she hopes he'll make it worth it.

* * *

Tom writes her a text message over Coaching Ethics three weeks after their little game. She knows it's him, instantly when she sees the little grey bubble flash with the words:  ** _Truth or Dare?_**

She types blindly,  ** _Truth_**  because she's sitting in the middle of a class and she's equally bored to watch and wait until Cormac McLaggen's shirt riles up enough to spot a patch of trained, tanned skin or listen to Professor Hooch's ongoing rambles about tactics and motivations speeches.

His answer doesn't take long.

**_Do you fear to die?_ **

She wants to laugh and can barely stop herself because the question is ridiculous, really. She can't remember a day when the emptiness hasn't been vast enough to welcome death like a second brother - or an eight, in her case.

**_No, not anymore. Your turn. Truth or Dare?_ **

**_Dare._ **

A glimmer of something risky pushes through her veins and her fingers hover over the send button perhaps a tad too long. She sends it anyway.

**_Make me fear again._ **

He doesn't answer after that.

She waits but nothing happens. Frustrated Ginny pushes her phone back into her pocket. Her disappointment doesn't wear off for the rest of the day.

* * *

The next day a strong hand pushes her from the train platform and she barely braces herself before she lands, hands and face on the gravel, down on the rails. Far away a train is approaching the station, its rattling sound pushing any voices out of her mind. Too many passengers crowd the border, one man screams and waves for her.

And then Tom.

Blending in with the people, stoic and waiting and clad in finest Burberry. Dark spots blot out the faces of everyone else, and then all she can see is the approaching form of the train at the end of the rails.

A tight sensation curls a fist around her chest. She can't think. She can't speak. But she can still move.

With a tremendous effort Ginny pushes herself up, hands clawing over the gravel and she grasps the arm that reaches for her. Someone pulls her up - and the next thing she feels is the bitter wind of the train in her back.

Her heart is hammering between her ribs, a fragile little beast. A traitor and she fears, god, she fears for her life. Snatching for breath she looks around - Tom is nowhere to be seen.

Even hours later her blood still sings in her mind like wine.

* * *

Tom is like a dire disease.

He's every addiction that she can't control.  ** _You scare me,_**  she writes one night, sitting at her window with her legs tucked up and her face against the cold glass. Her roommate sleeps silently on the other side of the room. She waits with her breath catching in her throat and papers of eaten chocolate glisten in the moonlight to her bare feet.

 ** _Why?_**  he finally answers and she needs a moment to compose herself, to write the right words.

She's not afraid to die, not exactly. But she's afraid he has the power to take her if he wants to. So she settles for something else, something more profound and true that spills between the wrinkles of her skin and the veins in her body.

**_Because I tell you things I don't even dare to tell myself._ **

* * *

The first blow is also the only one she needs.

Ginny knows more about anatomy and the human body than someone her age should. She knows how to make it worse and she knows how to make it worth. So when she takes her father's old golf club - the one where the metal already chips off and the cheap metallic alloy shines under the surface - and breaks into Malfoy's dorm after Tom's text ( ** _I want you to hurt someone, Ginny. Can you do that for me?_** ) she feels perfectly at ease. With a wide arm, she swings the club in a perfect 180° angle, just to dash it down on Draco Malfoy's left knee. The only sound beside his pathetic whine is the crack of splitting bones.

Kneecap dislocation if he's lucky, fraction if he's not so much.

There's the desperate and painful whimpering of Malfoy's crouched frame but she doesn't care. The hood over his head and the silver tape over his thin mouth should be enough to keep him quiet.

There is no one around. No one to stop her. Cons of having a single dorm.

She bolts soon after, out of the window and silent as a wraith. The taste of Tom's dare lies heavy like a coin on her tongue. With wide open eyes, she realises, that she had starved her whole life for this. She wonders if that's what people call love. She hopes it is.

* * *

The thing is, Ginny can still hear them.

The cruel laughter of people that think poorly of her second-hand books with dog ears and smudges on the sides, or her old Motorola flip phone that works just as fine a new iPhone. People like Millicent Bulstrode who pushes into Ginny's back so her books land down in a muddle of old rain and mud. Always raining in London. Ginny feels her cheeks brighten in the cold February wind.

"Watch where you go, minger." Millicent glares at her then, eyes arrogant and self-satisfied.

People start to laugh. People always do when they don't have a spark of common sense, Ginny reminds herself but it's already too late because the laughter grows and grows and drains everything else. She crouches down to take her books but Millicent is already gone. Her phone buzzes and she feels it before she reads it, the slight tingle of something dark and craving.

**_Do you want to make her pay?_ **

A last glance at the laughing mob is enough. She doesn't even hesitate.

**_Yes._ **

The hunger inside of her grows.

* * *

Millicent didn't come to university the next day. Rumours have it someone broke her nose and she doesn't want to risk that anyone sees her like that. Others say she has been coming down with the flu since days.

When she doesn't return for the rest of the week other rumours start to blend in.

One story crueller as the next. Some say she's dead.

Ginny doesn't care.

Survival, in the end, is just a synonym for beating death.

She shoulders her bag and leaves the classroom.

* * *

When spring comes around, Ginny realises that when you start to love a person, you start to lose your mind. It's a bit like poetry. They start to eat you alive, bit by bit, gut by gut until there's nothing else left except the admiration and flesh between their teeth.

When Tom kisses her for the first time, she can taste it. She finds, she likes the taste of blood just fine.

* * *

**_Kill him._ **

She doesn't know the boy. She doesn't need to. It's a dare and she knows she will do it.

Tom knows too.

Her own monster, the one she held captive in the darkness between her ribs and the warm pounding wave of her blood, finally broke loose. There's no control over it now. Tom has a leash, and she follows gladly.

She wonders, for the tiny split of a second, if Tom had known, all those weeks ago, on the roof of the Slytherin fraternity house.

She shrugs it off and takes a swing with the old, battered golf club. 180°, perfect angle - the shattering and cracking sound like thunder, like bones splitting right under the surface. The boy falls silent on the floor. A thin trail of thick, red blood pours out of his red ear.

It doesn't make a difference if he knew.

One of Tom's hands finds the way to her nape. A soft kiss on her neck, warm breath over the skin.

"Ask me," he whispers, hoarsely. Wild.

"Truth or dare?", she says.

Once, she saw a wasp drown in sugar.  
Now, she understands.


	102. Ginny x Tom - 9

**now.**

It's a simple pattern, a trifle paradigm that repeats itself each Wednesday since Ginny started grammar school.

After six hours of tiresome school lessons, she has a break of 50 glorious minutes in which she eats a sandwich - mostly ham or cheese - and makes her way down to the pitch to play striker in her school's football team for two more hours. She's good at it, a natural born athlete so she pushes her long red hair in a rigorous bun and chases the ball around until her muscles ache and her lungs burn from the sensation of too little oxygen.

Afterwards, Luna would wait for her and accompany her to the nearest Starbucks where she'd order a double latte with extra cream and chocolate drizzle. They'd talk about the usual topics; boys, school, boys again and sometimes Luna would tell her about strange gossip stories she heard in class - like Harry having a scandalous one-night stand in the Hog's Head, a shady bar, with Pansy Parkinson of all people - or that one time Dean gave Seamus oral in Snape's classroom after hours.

Rumours, of course.

Ginny would leave Luna an hour later and make her way to the library to get a new book for the week, a habit she adapted from Hermione at the start of grammar school and it helped her improving in McGonnagall's English class with time.

She takes the bus home at 6:20 p.m, the same one Neville Longbottom takes who usually keeps her a seat at the end of the aisle.

She arrives at home at 7:05 p.m.

Each Wednesday it's the same pattern, each Wednesday repeats like Groundhog Day.

It's the perfect alibi.

* * *

**then.**

Tom Riddle is twenty-one years old and as dangerous as his reputation, as sharp as the cut edges of his high cheekbones and the deadly glimmer of his teeth between red lips.

Ginny is seventeen when they meet at Granger's birthday party, and she's tired of being bossed around like a puppet on strings and fed up of being the nice little girl with braided flowers in her hair.

So when Tom Riddle with his ridiculously good looking skinny jeans and black leather jacket offers her a cigarette in the backyard of Hermione Granger's house, she doesn't deny it but takes it with greedy fingers. When he offers her a kiss afterwards, she doesn't deny that either.

It's the start of this tragedy.

* * *

**now.**

Ginny enters the library early enough and switches the book in her bag with another young adult novel with a boring plot and the same kind of white damsel in distress. She doesn't have time to think about her choice because this is just part of her cover, part of something that has to be done.

She leaves with quick steps and runs three blocks the other way to climb a dirty greased and rust-covered fire escape with shaking fingers. Each step squeaks under her weight and echoes loud in the alley under her. A cat is meowing atop of a dustbin and it reeks of days old piss and spilt beer.

Ginny reaches the last bar of the ladder and swings her body over the metal poles. Something sharp stings at her neck but she brushes it harsh away and kneels in front of a window that is barely open, just enough to wriggle the tips of her fingers in the gap and push the glass up.

With a last glance back down on the dirty streets she climbs into the flat and pushes the window shut again.

No breath escapes her lips; she doesn't dare.

* * *

**interlude.**

"Where's Tom?", Abraxas asks, slumping down on the couch next to Bellatrix, putting a casual arm around the backrest. With the other hand he opens the knot of his tie and the first buttons of his shirt until his throat lies bare and glimmers white in the bright light of Bellatrix' room.

"With that redhead," Rabastan snorts and stretches his feet in front of him as if they did something to offend him. Rodolphus takes a deep breath from his cigarette and reaches over to hand it to Bella, who takes an equally deep breath. The smoke reeks sweet and sickly in the room.

Abraxas wrinkles his nose up.

"Ah, yeah. I heard the rumours."

"Everyone did. Isn't she a bit young?"

"Swept away by a child-"

"Seventeen is hardly a child anymore." Abraxas rolls his eyes and bends his neck backwards until the bones creak in his shoulders. When no one answers him he tentatively murmurs between two breaths.

"Besides there's something about her… something desperate that waits to be set free."

He can't help but wonder if Tom knows this too.

They change the topic soon after.

* * *

**then.**

People say once a monster tastes blood it will come for more.

Tom heaves her slender body up until her legs snake around his waist and kisses her; he's like a feral dog, pressing his fingers in the soft flesh of her bare thighs until it hurts enough to leave bruises when morning comes.

It's raining down on them and her dress glues to her body like a second skin, thin and warm cotton around her curves. Tom still wears too many clothes during summer and she tries to claw her nails under the thick fabric of his leather jacket and tee until she feels the skin break in his nape; she leaves five claw marks that draw the faint trace of blood.

Crazed and wild, thirsty for more, Tom bites down on her lips like he wants to make her pay. It hurts in the most blissful way and everything feels dizzy in her head. Hungrily. Desperately. Eager to break her open bone by bone, muscle by muscle to taste her.

Ginny is horrified and amazingly dazzled at the same time. Another bite stings like an electric charge and a second later she can taste copper and blood on her lips and tongue.

People say once a monster tastes blood it will come for more.

 _They're right_ , she thinks and crushes their lips together again.

* * *

**now.**

"Ginevra."

Ginny freezes. She watches, with growing horror, how Tom emerges from the shadows of the living room, leaning his long slender hips against the wooden doorframe. The gun in her hand starts to shake. Tom's face phases through frames of dread, anguish, confusion, anger. So much anger. Rage twists the handsome features of his face in a cruel, perverse mask.

"I'm torn between feeling proud and betrayed." Tom's voice, she realizes with repulsion, is sugar sweet and hides anything under pure calmness. Easy and slow. Deceptively persuasive.

She clenches her jaw and the fingers around the trigger simultaneously; she hopes she's not visibly shaking. No word escapes her lips.

"I see," Tom finally drawls, arms still crossed over his chest. His grey eyes glimmer deadly in the dark light of the setting sun.

He still looks at her as if he's about to snap her neck in two and very much enjoying it, but Ginny keeps him at bay, the gun fixed between his eyes.

The corners of his mouth draw up in some kind of ridiculing smirk.

Ginny pretends she doesn't notice.

* * *

**then.**

Her intuition suggests something isn't right.

In the dark of the night, something waits.

 _Someone_ waits.

Ginny is running, feet slamming on the uneven pavement of the street in a frantic rhythm. Her breath comes short, lungs burning from the missing air. Vaguely familiar broken buildings come into her view; her neck snaps back at the sound of a low laugh in the distance.

She hyperventilates and she can't breath, she can't see anything in the dark and she's still running,  _god_ , she's still - she rounds a corner and sees the soft orange light of her parent's house at the end of the street. She wastes no moment but darts around the house and climbs the old gutter to climb up hand over hand to her own room. Ginny shifts quickly, entering her room through the window and snapping it shut; her eyes stare out of to the street but nothing can be seen in the dark.

Her own reflexes slow down when moments pass and her breath evens out eventually.

No one's there. No one dares.

She closes her eyes very slowly and steps away. Only then she smells the faint trace of a strange scent in the air; tobacco and something darker than she's used to. Leather and aftershave.  _Tom's_ aftershave.

Horrified she turns around.

Every fibre of her body is tense - but her room is empty; empty beside a small box on top of her bed. She wants to rip it into pieces, but she knows better.

Slowly, her heart hammering painfully between her ribs, she draws closer and takes the box in her hands. It's not a large box, but rather square and compact; it's a bright turquoise blue with a silver bow keeping the lid on top. The box feels empty and light in her hands; she can see the Tiffany tag reflecting on the carton.

Her heart misses a beat.

No one ever bought her something so expensive. Something so utterly delicate and costly - carefully but excited, she unwraps the bow and opens the lid to glimpse inside.

A shiver runs down her spine.

Her stomach drops in terror, her heart races like a raging woodpecker, her blood a river of anxiety.

In the box lies a dead hummingbird, a beautiful blue creature pinned with needles into a white, soft cushion. Blood is everywhere.

Evil always preys on the innocent.

The carpet silences the bounce when the box slithers out of Ginny's hands.

* * *

**then.**

Ginny buys a Walther P8 compact from a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy. It's black and sleek in her sweating hands and she buys four more magazines just to be sure. The guy who sells the gun reeks of alcohol and wears too much leather - or perhaps it's just the general scent of the back alley of the Hog's Head. His name's something with Flint, but Ginny doesn't care enough to ask him; she counts the bills and hands them over.

"150, was it?"

"150, little bird."

He counts the bills with flicks of his dirty fingers and puts them hurriedly away. He looks at her expecting, almost waiting for her to say something else. But he doesn't open his mouth, so she doesn't either.

She puts the gun into her bag and hides it under her mathematics textbook and a new pack of highlighters.

Then, she turns around and leaves.

The gun in her pocket feels heavy and intrusive for the rest of her walk home.

* * *

**now.**

"Tell me Ginevra, what will happen now?" Tom hasn't moved from the doorframe but his shoulders are set with tension. He flexes his long fingers against the soft curve of his arm. His tongue flicks over the dry cushion of his under lip, his eyes pierce grey into hers. Ginny blinks first; a drop of sweat runs down her nape and spine.

"Will you kill me?"

"I intend to."

"I see," he says again while clicking his tongue in an amused manner.

Her finger around the trigger twitches.

Cautiously he takes a step closer, like a predator setting for the kill. Ginny's aim and arm steadies in time with her breaths. Tom halts. He watches her for a long time. The grey in his eyes is almost touchable, a glacial layer on a frozen surface. Too slippery for her liking. No emotion on display. When he raises his voice to speak again, his tone finally changes into something darker and lethal.

"Tell me Ginevra," he says her name in short, cut syllables. Ginny shivers, horrified. "What is more deadly, the bullet or the thought?"

"I don't mind, either does the job for me."

Tom grins, small and secretly and suddenly he looks more alive than before. More perilous, too. His eyes glimmer strange and feverish in the half-dark.

"The bullet always gives the opportunity. The thought pulls the trigger."

Ginny breaths out, shaking slowly.

She can't forget him. Never. She will remember him, forever, from the scars he leaves behind. The pieces he cut out of her with sharp words and a razor-sharp smile on his lips.

A shudder runs through her system; her fingers tighten around the trigger and the cold metal of the gun.

She should have walked away long ago. When she still thought Tom was nothing than perfect, without the rotten undertone of his soul.

The second hand of her watch sounds unusually loud in her ears.

* * *

**then.**

The wind scourges rigid around Ginny's slender frame and slips through the seams of her cheap workout clothes; they're simple and black and do the job good enough to catch the sweat on her skin and don't let her freeze in mild January temperatures.

Ginny runs three miles each day before classes and always slips back into her room before her mother notices.

After a while, she takes the gun with her.

She only practices with a silencer she bought online at amazon - you get all the shit on the internet without the need to verify your age. Only the days the forest is dead and abandoned. She never aims at animals but trains to keep her hands steady at the trees. Three bullets make a shaky triangle in the bark.

Time rushes by without sympathetic feelings or emotions. Her bones are fortressed like matchsticks, her veins running on gasoline. Both are only waiting for the flame to light them up.

* * *

**then.**

The frost dews around march.

Ginny notices the fresh grass under her feet when she runs her morning miles. Her aim gets better with each passing day, the bullets never missing the bark anymore.

Three perfect shots in the same hole. Ginny is delighted.

Never again would her red hair tangle in Tom Riddle's perfect, spideresque fingers. No blood under her fingernails anymore. No cage around the hard muscle of her heart.

She's ready.

Ginny burns and puts another bullet in the bark.

* * *

**interlude.**

Ginny isn't very loud when she comes; she never is.

Her nails dig into the pale flesh of Tom's shoulders until she draws blood. Tom never pulls away, hisses under the burning pain and bites hard on her collarbone until she can feel the skin bruise under his teeth. Sometimes she fears he will crack the bone but he always stops when her flesh begins to weep with love.

But this time something changes between them.

Tom's eyes are full of hazard like she's never seen them before. In the aftermath of her orgasm his hand snakes around her neck - and suddenly he's strangling her. Thumbs and fingers are pressing painfully in the hollow under Ginny's jaws and she tries to push him away, grabs his wrists with both hands and rips at the ends.

No Chance.

Tom pushes and presses every single breath out of her system. His eyes are two pools of perfection, glimmering perilous and excited in the dark of his flat.

No breath in her lungs anymore.

No time.

Dark spots dance before Ginny's eyes.

Something like a laugh escapes his lips.

Then, finally. he lets go.

She gasps for air like a drowning mess. Each breath burns its way up her throat and nose. She's shaking visibly. Tom above her is still grinning like a maniac.

Her heart lies in pieces in the small space around them.

* * *

**now.**

Tom looks at her from across the room as if he forces himself to understand the perversion of this situation. Ginny doesn't flinch when his eyes meet hers.

The moment she will open her head to his sweet nonsense he will sidle himself between her creases and wrinkles, like a toxic that simmers slowly into her veins and into her heart. She has tried to erase him before - with words, with actions and in the end, even with cuts so deep they left scars on the inside of her wrists.

Reality between them wears thin like a cobweb; she needs to get him out of her system.

* * *

**Now.**

Her finger around the trigger twitches nervously.

"Do you love me, Ginevra?"

Her eyes narrow. Tom watches her curiously, the dark of his eyes strangely blown and hungry, almost as if he tries to swallow Ginny whole. Her throat goes dry. Tom smiles but it's not a sad smile nor is it happy; it's dark around the edges, spiked and horrific and the white of his teeth glimmers like clean bones.

"Do you love me enough to pull the trigger?"

She can feel it now.

_The hands around her throat again.  
_ _The pressure on her chin.  
_ _The grip in her hair.  
_ _The guidance on her own fingers.  
_ _The biting flash of pain on her collarbone.  
_ _His eyes on her the whole time.  
_ _The bird bleeding in her hands.  
_ _The lingering scent of his tobacco._

The power and strength of the gun are disarming.

The saddest thing about betrayal is, that it never comes from the ones you expect it already.

It never comes from your enemies.

Ginny's finger pulls the trigger.

* * *

**This looks like the end of the story, but it isn't.**

**It isn't.**

* * *

**now.**

Every pulse in her body reverberates with the aftermath of the shot. Surprisingly her hands aren't shaking when she arrives at the bus station alongside Neville. The gun feels heavy and warm in her bag, buried under textbooks and papers again. They don't talk much.

"Tired," she tells Neville and he believes her like the good naive boy he is. Or perhaps she just became good at lying during the last months. She closes her eyes and fakes light sleep for the rest of their ride.

Home roars with the familiar sound of siblings fighting over dinner and her father talking about his work in the Ministry. Ginny closes the door behind her as silent as possible and takes a hard breath, squinting up at the ceiling where the old lamp casts orange and yellow shades on the wall.

She's home.

She's safe.

She pushes herself up to climb the stairs, her bag swinging with every step she takes.

"Ginny, dear, are you alright?"

Ginny's head swirls around, the knuckles around the railing white from holding on too tight. Her mind is too distracted to process details but it's her mother who's asking and, before Ginny can flinch away, she already has a hand over Ginny's fingers, patting it in a comforting manner.

"You look pale, dear. And what's that stain on your collar?"

For the split of a horrible moment, Ginny thinks she's caught. But then her mother sighs in her typical annoyed manner and shoos her up in her room. She probably thinks it's a grass or soil spots from football practice. Ginny doesn't breath out until she reaches the bathroom.

Then, finally, she slides up against the wall for a second, arms and legs flat against the rough surface. The mirror across from her paints her red with blood.

She doesn't shake until she climbs into the shower.

* * *

**then.**

In a cornfield right out of Crawley, Tom pulls over and stops the car. The moon hangs already low and white in the bright blue sky, something you can only witness during early summer evenings.

"I have a present for you, Ginevra," he says with a wolfish smile and takes her hand in the warm embrace of his own. His long fingers wind around her thin wrist, his thumb drawing imaginary circles over her pulse.

Ginny follows him in the deep of the cornfield, far enough that she would never be able to find her way out without his help. When they reach a certain place a man kneels naked and shivering in front of her, his thin lips pressed into a line, bitten to blood. Scratches and cuts are all over his body. Tom looks at her expectantly. Waiting.  _Hungry._

Ginny Weasley kills her first man with Tom Riddle's hands around her own and his breath in her ears and the smell of tobacco and something darker in her nostrils; she can't do it without him. The sun and the moon are both white witnesses on the sky above, when the bullet hits the sternum with a wet, earsplitting crunch.

"I love you," Tom drawls like a ripe fruit and tugs her hair until their lips meet in a forced kiss.

There's too much between them, raw emotions and a path drenched in blood.

Reality shifts into a new rhythm.

Ginny realizes she loves him to pieces.

She can't let that happen again.

Never again.

* * *

**now.**

There's blood in the mirror; blood on her hands, blood matted into her hair. Blood everywhere.

Ginny rinses it off in the shower and watches the trail of clean water that dies in the drain without a single trace of blood.

She breathes deep in and listens to the water that clings wet to her skin. She climbs out of the shower and doesn't bother with toweling herself before she enters her dark room. Her mirror waits like a silent witness, leaning stoical against the wall. Ginny has never been vain, but she needs to see herself tonight.

Her naked body is shivering and unusually pale, the slight tan from her practice looks faint and nearly gone. Freckles like golden dust cover her cheeks under big green eyes; eyes so cold and set it dries her throat in an instead.

_Is this really me?_

Carefully she brushes her fingers against the cold surface of the glass. Blood is still covering the fingers of her reflection and draws even over the slim scars on her wrists. All the battle wounds she got from fighting against herself. Against  _him._

"Ginevra."

A sliver of icy lips swallow her pulse on her neck. Breathing sighs against her ear. Tom stares at her from the mirror, his hands ghosting around her waist. She doesn't bother to swirl her head around - she has seen the hole in his chest and the blood that drenched the carpet.

"Did you miss me?"

He's not real. Not anymore.

Tom's bright grey eyes are steady and impassive in the dark, calm seas waiting for the rain. The powder burn and the dark hole in his chest stare at her like a cloud of void trying to swallow her whole. It calms her, like the waves settling on the shore.

Ginny smiles like a butterfly-knife; sweat and thick like honey.

When she turns away from the mirror, Tom stays behind.

He always will.


	103. Tom x Hermione - 13

**I have existed in silence.**

**For an eternity.**

* * *

**i.**

The first time, Tom is eleven years old.

It's his first year in Hogwarts and he needs a place to hide from Myrtle and her sticky hands, pumpkin-cinnamon dough still clinging between the hollows of her little clumsy fingers. He's a skinny boy with a thatch of black hair on his head, eyes haunted and blown wide. His sweater is rolled up to the elbows and it looks too big for his small body, too baggy around his slender bones. The dark denim of his trousers is faded at the ends, the seam lose. His face is pale, his skin an unusual shade of underlying greenness from shimmering-through veins. He looks sick. He looks exhausted.

The hard wooden door creaks under his fingers when he pushes it open; he needs to lean his full body against it before it even budges an inch, and even after, he needs a lot of force to slip through the gap. It falls close with a clamorous finite.

Relieved, Tom breathes in deep.

The room is large, but empty. High windows are casting burned shadows from the afternoon sun which dips the room in a soft, golden shimmer. Sun rays reflect on the metallic surface of a single object in the centre of the room. Tom approaches it warily. The wizarding world taught him to never trust something magical - or worse locked up.

_It's a mirror?_

The surface of the reflecting glass feels cold under his palm, yet warm and pulsating. It's a strange sensation at first, like something lives under it. Something inhuman.

A flicker waves over the silver glass, and suddenly right beside his own reflection, a girl looks back at him - a ghost, he thinks at first.

She can't be any older than him, bushy, curly hair around her face, large teeth and freckles on her dark skin.

_No. No ghost._

She cocks her head on the other side, her reflection strangely silver and blue and Tom does the same. He pushes himself close to the glass, almost as if he could fall to the other side if he looks hard enough. But this is not Alice in Wonderland it seems.

"Who are you?" he asks, voice tentative and whispering.

"A friend," the girl answers. Her voice is high pitched and fits her age. Her eyes sparkle like glimmer. Cold.

Tom scrunches up his nose. His eyes are half-closed in disbelief. He's eleven, but he's no fool.

_Dark magic._

"What are you?" He finally asks and the girl smirks back at him, sharp like flinders.

_She's dangerous._

"There is no real me. Only an entity, something illusory." On the other side of the mirror, she pushes against the glass, presses her little fingers on the same positions as Tom's rest, almost as if she tries to touch him.

His fingertips twitch.

"I don't do you do?"

He's not afraid.

The girl in the mirror giggles.

"I can't tell you-"

Little Tom snarls and rips his hands from the mirror, clenches them at his side.

The girl in the mirror whispers, breathes against the cold glass.

"But I can show you."

* * *

**ii.**

The second time, Tom is twelve years old.

"Show me my parents again," Tom says and huddles the thick blanket over his shoulders. It's the night of New Year's Eve, long after curfew and the temperatures are just cold enough for the first layer of snow to lie on Hogwarts' grounds.

Hermione - how the girl in the mirror named herself, snaps her finger and two persons materialize out of thin air behind her. One of them is a young man with a handsome face but a stoic stance. Tom recognizes his face in the man, the hard-edged chin and the fine, aristocratic nose. He doesn't recognize anything of himself in his mother.

_They didn't want me._

_He didn't want me._

_She didn't want me._

Tom snarls and bashes his fist against the glass.

_I wish they were dead._

"Show me how people accept me next," Tom says again and Hermione snaps her finger once more. A sea of people stares back at him, all of them praising him for his works. The picture twists and changes until a couple of younger boys shape in the bluish mist - they apologize to Tom. They adore him.

Tom smirks, sharp and haunted.

"You know," Hermione starts and presses her forehead against the cold glass, "You could have this - and more. I can show you if you want?"

He's read enough books in the Restricted Section to know he shouldn't do it. Never trust a living object. Never.

_Dark Magic._

His eyes glint in the frost-covered shadow of the moon, bright steel blue.

"Show me. Show me everything."

* * *

**iii.**

The third time, Tom is thirteen years old.

Tom is out of breath.

_They found out. They found out. They found out._

Slytherin's can be exorbitantly cruel when your name is no synonym for royalty, wealth or pureblood.

He presses his front to the cold tiles, his palms flat beside either side of his face and breathes - deep, deeper.

_I want to hurt them. I want to- no. I need to hurt them. I need to pull them apart one by one. To break their bones. To destroy them._

"They will never respect you if you won't do it."

He looks up and Hermione's face looks back at him.

She smirks. Her eyes glint dangerously.

"What should I do?"

"Make them bleed."

_Dark Magic._

"I don't - I don't know how-"

"I will show you."

* * *

**iv.**

The fourth time, Tom is fourteen years old.

A thick tome rests in his lap and he turns the pages lazily, flicks one of the stray dark strands absently behind his ear. His hair has grown in the last few years, but he doesn't seem to mind - it is still short and not chin-length, but long enough to push it back.

"What's the book about?" Hermione eventually asks and mirrors his position on the other side of the mirror.

"Dark Magic."

Hermione snorts.

"There is no good or bad Magic. Magic simply is."

Tom turns his head, just enough that his cheek lies flat on the cold glass, his nose barely touching it.

"Show me."

Hermione on the other side, starts to grin.

It looks vicious.

Tom's heart misses a beat.

* * *

**v.**

The fifth time, Tom is fifteen years old.

"You're beautiful," Tom says one night, between strung-together half-truths and deadly wishes.

_Will you forget me if I die?_

"You don't need to," she answers the voice inside his head.

"Nothing stays forever. Nothing exists for eternity. Life itself is ephemeral."

"Not me," she answers and throws the wild mess of curls around. Her dark skin glistens blue in the cold surface.

Tom shivers from satisfaction.

_Immortality._

"Show me how."

* * *

**vi.**

The sixth time, Tom is sixteen years old.

"She's dead."

Voice cold, jaw set, breath caught behind a perfect row of white teeth. Tom says it with such finality, Hermione feels the hunger rising inside of her.

A hurricane between her ribs.

"What now?" The blue reflection of the girl asks, both palms flat on the cold surface, wrinkles and creases of her skin clearly visible. She's sixteen too, aged each year with him.

_Dark Ma- no. Magic._

His eyes are dark, hungry, the usual apathy lost in the act. He wants. He needs. Power.

"Show me more."

* * *

**vii.**

The seventh time, Tom is seventeen years old.

"You never answered my question."

Tom sits on the tiles, mirrors the position from all those years ago when he first entered the room with the strange mirror. It's summer in Hogwarts this time; not long and he'll escape the cage of Dumbledore. He'll be able to travel. He'll be able to grow.

Hermione hums in agreement and plays lazily with one of her long curls, the smile never faltering her full lips. The sun illuminates the glass of the mirror and her dark, usual bluish skin looks golden and red.

"You don't need to hear to know."

They stay silent for a long time, before Tom breaks the silence again.

"Will you show me?"

Her smile twists around the edges until it is some crueller, more gruesome version.

"I can try."

* * *

**viii.**

The eighth time, Tom is thirty-one years old.

Darkness never leaves his side, swallows him like a soundless, expressionless void.

He visits her the day he asks for a teaching post in Hogwarts. The day he hides Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem. His face is ashen and strikingly sharp, cheekbones high and cutting. Even his nose splits his face into two symmetrical halves; eyes hollow and gleaming in the shades of the night.

"There's nothing to show you any more," Hermione says from the other side of the glass.

He had loved her once. Like a shadow. Like the split second of sparkling stars when you rub your eyes. Like the feeling when you drown.

Tom sneers disparagingly. His lip curls over his teeth in disgust.

_Too much. Too much._

He turns around and leaves.

* * *

**ix.**

The last time, Tom is seventy-one years old.

Nothing reminds her of the young boy with the cold grey eyes. His porcelain skin is barely visible, a stretched, white flesh over sharp bones. He's a hybrid by now, half-snake, half-human. He simply is not. The memories of him, the ones she held dear, were nothing more than ashes of yesterday.

He crumbles and scratches at the glass, snarls until his teeth nearly scratch the cold surface of the mirror.

"You promised me! You said I could have it all!"

Hermione in the mirror looks pristine, flawless, her skin dark and soft, the corners of her mouth set into a shark-like grin. A butcher's knife.

"Mirror's lie Tom."

_Dark Magic. Dark Magic._

She watches his face fall, his eyes growing larger and larger until it almost looks as if the white pops out.

"That's what we do."

The mirror always lies.

Everyone does.

* * *

**x.**

There is nothing more seductive—and dangerous—than being listened to.

Voldemort dies and that's it.

Happily ever after.

_(Right?)_


	104. Tom x Draco

He came here to talk to him. He tries to remember this.

Tom kisses him and for a second it feels like Tom is yielding and Draco is winning but Tom's hands only waver for the shortest time before they rest high on Draco's neck. He presses his fingers down until the muscles ache and scream of pain - and then he kisses him back.

"What I can do to people like you," Tom purrs and drags his long fingers slowly down his neck, resting the tip on his pulse. He morses pain against the throbbing vein. The blood inside Draco's head rushes painfully. His hand coils around Draco's slender neck, leaving nothing but dry air in the back of his throat.

It's still as bad as it's ever been and worse, so much worse.

It's getting harder to remember.

"I could kill you," Tom whispers again and licks a hot, wide stripe down from Draco's cheek to the bone in his shoulder. When he bites the bone cracks.

The pain waters his eyes. His breath dies behind his teeth.

He doesn't remember what he came to talk about anymore.


	105. Tom x Hermione - 14

**?**

Time is a fluent thing.

It bends and flows and pours with the slight disturbances and waves, like a river that lies sleeping until you start throwing rocks into it. Time can bend and turn and sometimes twist - but never break.

She clutches the golden turner around her neck and turns the hourglass between her shaking fingers.

* * *

**1944**

Tom Riddle is sixteen years old when he sees her for the first time.

The girl is mysterious, a conundrum with a sun-kissed face and her hands clenched tightly around a small golden object and a wand between her fingers. He has never seen her before around Hogwarts - or Hogshead for that matter - and mind you, he's pretty good at keeping tabs on people. She's breathing hard, her face painted in disappointment and rage and Tom wonders what the poor soul who deserves this glance has ever done to her.

"Excuse me Miss-", he starts. The girl looks at him for the first time, really looks at him, and her eyes are drawn with regret. There's a sparkle of something sad behind those eyes as if she has experienced great loss just mere seconds ago. Then the curtains fall and she's unreadable under the faint lights of Hogwarts' candles.

He tastes the reeking stench of bile in the back of his throat.

"Murderer," she snarls and clenches her wand even tighter.

Tom's face just splits.

* * *

**1945**

They're sitting in the old shabby corner of the Hog's mead when he meets her next. Malfoy, Nott and the rest of his band of misfits insisted that they'd sneak out at their last day to graduate properly with a couple of butterbeers and firewhiskies, a bad decision as Tom notices when Rosier starts to sing one of the new American Jazz songs as soon as his blood alcohol level rises high enough.

Her hair gives her away. A mess of bushy curls all around her face in different colors of brown - chocolate with a touch of hazel and honey at the ends - and her eyes fierce and strong, focussed on him alone. Unnerving. Tom strides over to where she's leaning against the bar.

"I wasn't sure you'd show again."

She misses a beat and swallows the tense air dry.

"Makes us two."

Tom hums in agreement and takes another sip of his still full glass. Hermione's head feels light from the tension, and in the dark of the bar, she struggles to put her words together. "So you actually waited for me?"

His smirk is lethal.

"It's not often that a girl shows me how much she hates me on first sight."

"So that made me special?"

"Not that," he drawls the word longer than necessary and clicks his tongue against his gums. "But I have to admit I was never accused of murder before. That made you special my dear."

He takes another sip of his glass and Hermione watches curiously the way the collar of his black jacket paints a gaudy shade over the slim line of his throat. She wants to touch it, to trace the patch between his pale skin and the dark lining of the fabric. When she looks up his eyes drill in hers.

"If you're attempting to woo me with flattery, I'm afraid it won't work."

His laugh is clear and sharp like a gunshot. Hermione feels herself falling for its centre.

* * *

**1951**

She doesn't meet him for a long time.

She doesn't search for him either.

She searches for something else and sets off to find it in Albania.

How lucky there's only one tree in whole Albania, she thinks with a hint of sarcasm and drinks water out of a puddle to beat the heat.

No matter where he goes, nothing can change what he is: Lord Voldemort and Tom Riddle all the same.

The diadem is already gone. What else did she expect?

* * *

**1954**

"So you're working in retail now? Isn't that like the lowest bar? Considering that you're burdened with glorious purpose."

Hermione watches Tom doing double-entry accounting, half-hidden in the shadows, an amused glimmer behind her eyes. Tom snorts and pushes stray strains of his hair out of his face. It has grown longer during the last years but it is still pitch-black against the stark contrast of his pale skin. She wonders how it feels like to run her hands through it.

"I don't think I have to explain my intentions to you."

"What makes you think I don't know them already?", she challenges and watches the black of his eyes swallowing the bright grey. Something hungry lurks in the dark. He clenches his knuckles around the feather in his hand until they are white and veiny. Hermione feels strangely satisfied.

"How are the customers?", she easily changes the subject and runs one of her fingers over the satin fabric of a wooden box.

"They're fine. Half of them just come to stare at the dark relicts we display."

"Or perhaps they come to stare at you."

His lips quirk up just ever so slightly but his eyes never leave the blank pages of the book in front of him. Hermione turns away and examines a strange mirror cabinet in the far end of the room.

The feather scratches loudly over the rough parchment.

* * *

**1967**

They travel together for almost three months when she says, "Dark magic won't make you great, you know?"

Tom looks at her for a long moment. "Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite -"

"-spawns lies, I know," she finishes annoyed and climbs two rocks at once, not accepting his hand to help her up. She brushes some sand and dust from her clothes and watches the way his muscles work when he grabs for the next rock on the cliff. She wants to punch the smirk off his face, but she's too busy to regain her breath. He smirks even more.

"Greatness is not what I'm after," he says solemnly but he doesn't climb up yet. He doesn't look at her but she feels the way he gnaws on the next words before he says, "I want immortality."

"Why do you want to be immortal?" It's a tentative question, something that hovers between them like a thick, unspoken secret. The air suddenly dries out.

"What a silly question," Tom laughs but it' a hollow sound, like the sound of an old record player that he plays the same tone on repeat. "To live forever of course."

"That's not what immortality is," she immediately bristles and suddenly everything around them dies down. She can feel the sharp wind like metal flinders on her skin; she brushes it away. The sudden realization flares up her anger once more. "Immortality is a farce. You cheat death and let me tell you he doesn't like to be cheated. It's against human nature, we're born to wither away some day. It's unnatural. Everything we do and learn and create will die with us. If you're immortal, what do you even live for anymore?" When he doesn't answer immediately, she pushes further, "Immortality is everybody else around you dying while you're helpless to do anything against it."

"We'll see," Tom snorts and heaves himself over another rock. Hermione stays behind and fights the urge to scream.

* * *

**1971**

The war rages for a year.

Sometimes she catches the look he throws her from across the room, bent ominously over dark magic books and artefacts. It's something fragile and hopeful, something that says he'd wreck anything that stands in his way.

She watches him from afar and wonders how much longer she can stand to watch him snap and push and bend her own morals. She feels as if she's rotting from the inside.

She stays anyways.

* * *

**1979**

In the end, everything lead to this.

There's a hand under her skirt and another that is painfully buried inside her hair. A sharp pain of peaked teeth tears through her flesh and her collarbone already starts to hurt; Hermione's afraid he will break bones with more force than necessary. There are hands pushing and tearing and ripping and grabbing until naked skin pushes against naked skin. Hermione feels her breasts flat against Tom's chest and every breath hurts because the air smells of Tom and his magic and his power - she moans when he slides into her. She's ravishing beautiful and he wants to wrap his hands around her neck, press until her breath sticks right in her lungs so he could clap his lips over hers and breathe and breathe and breathe - his heart tightens.

He will die soon anyways.

* * *

**1982**

The Potter house is a slaughterhouse. Ruins tower out of every edge and corner, metal bars lie stray to her feet.

She waits until Hagrid and Sirius leave the crime scene before she steps up and looks for his rotten soul.

* * *

**1992**

He's sixteen again. Hermione watches curiously behind one of Salazar's stone statues when he duels Harry, the basilisk towering like a bad omen behind him. He's nothing more than a shade of a ghost, something dead but alive all the same and his pale skin looks translucent in the dark cave. She thinks of herself as the naive child that lies petrified in the medical wing and wonders what would have been if she'd known sooner. She forces herself to stay until Harry drills the basilisk teeth deep into the diary and Tom flares up in blinding light.

It's the third time she watches him die and she thought it would be easier by now.

She was wrong.

* * *

**1996**

"I saw you in the ministry."

His looming figure in the Malfoy library looks startled for a second. "You are still alive."

"Seems like it."

"You still haven't aged. You still look the same", he says next and it's almost an accusation. A fleeting emotion passes his flat face and the white skin over his gaudy bones stretches into a terrible snarl, something humanimal right before the kill. He tries to snatch her arm but only reaches thin air. "How is that possible? Tell me how you did it! Tell me!"

"I don't age. But I wither and decay - when my time comes."

"You're immortal!"

"I am not."

"Don't you dare deny it. You visit me every couple of years, you never age, you never change." His snarl is splinter thin, covered in ice and reaches for her throat but she flings herself backwards. His eyes glimmer red and deadly in the dark room. Suddenly his voice dies down to a hissing whisper. "You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of mine with you."

A cold shiver runs over her body.

Monsters aren't born. They are made.

The monster in front of her is  _her_  creation.

Her doing. Her visits who kept him longing for immortality. For a life equally at her side.

Her heart clenches in painful agony.

She made a terrible mistake.

She bolts before his Avada Kedavra can hit her and ignores his feverish screaming.

* * *

**1998**

Lord Voldemort dies.

His body falls silently to the floor, eyes empty.

Or is it Tom Riddle that finally finds his rest?

Hermione, hidden behind the ruins of Hogwarts, watches her other self taking a deep breath and clenching her fingers around the golden object in her pants. The loss and grief wash over her for a second time. It's almost noticeable in the small space between them.

What she felt for him existed outside of time itself. It was alive, hungry and insatiable. It had devoured her from the first minute on.

She had felt infinite.

Almost immortal.

When her real self, the girl she was before this journey, returns to the chamber of secrets, Hermione follows her quietly. She waits until her copy turns the time turner in shaking hands and vanishes in thin air.

Time is fluid, but unbreakable after all.

Hermione blinks slowly. The world around her is quite. There are no cheers in the chamber, no cries of joy or any other noises that distract her from her grief. She steps over the forgotten basilisk skeleton and crawls her way up again.

Somewhere in the back of the cave one of the stalactites trickles water on green rotten tiles.


End file.
